Silver-hydrogen interactions in crystalline silicon

Abstract

The creation of defects by hydrogen in silver-doped silicon crystals is investigated by deep-level transient spectroscopy. The electrical activity of the substitutional silver impurities can be totally removed due to defect formation with hydrogen atoms. However, this process includes the creation of intermediate electrically active silver-hydrogen complexes. One of the defects, Ag-H 1 , contains one hydrogen atom and introduces three levels in the energy gap. Another electrically active complex is formed by addition of a second hydrogen atom to the Ag-H 1 defect. The Ag-H complexes are stable up to 300-350°C. The electrically inactive complex includes at least three hydrogen atoms and anneals out at ϳ450°C. The kinetics of the defect transformations are studied in detail, and the distance of silver-hydrogen interaction is estimated to be very close to the lattice parameter. ͓S0163-1829͑99͒02308-5͔

Tin-vacancy acceptor levels in electron-irradiated n-type silicon

“…On the other hand, this short-range potential may also be responsible for an electricfield dependence that has been reported for electron ͑hole͒ emission from double acceptor ͑donor͒ centers, in the case, for instance, of transition-metal impurities either isolated on substitutional lattice sites 26,27 or complexed with hydrogen. 28 In this case, however, the barrier lowering for emission is much smaller than in the case of the classical Poole-Frenkel effect. The observation of a weak dependence of the emission rate of the SnV1 level on the electric-field strength is thus indicative of this center being a double acceptor.…”

Bistable Photoconduction in Semiconductors

“…Infact, several deep recombination centers in low-bandgap semiconductors manifested this behavior since the very beginning of the studies on limiting charge life-time centers (Wertheim, 1959). Particularly, in the last years an extensive thermal spectroscopy study revealed that this behavior is quite common for transition metals in semiconductors (Grillenberger, 2004;Knack et al, 2002;Sachse et al, 2000;Shiraishi et al, 1999;Yarykin et al, 1999). …”

“…This seemingly unlikely condition happens to be verified by several transition metal impurities in germanium, silicon, silicon carbide (Grillenberger, 2004;Knack et al, 2002;Sachse et al, 2000;Shiraishi et al, 1999;Wertheim, 1959;Yarykin et al, 1999), both in case of doubly and triply ionized centers. A treatment of photoconduction in semiconductor in which recombination is assured by multiply ionized centers can be found in ref.…”

“…For instance, for native EL2 centers in gallium arsenide, undoubtely one of the most studied (Delaye & Sugg, 1994;Lin et al, 2006;Sudzius et al, 1999;Vincent et al, 1982), R 1 = C 1p /C 1n (see section 5) is known to vary in the range 10 −3 − 1 from the ambient to cryogenic temperatures , the dependence of its recovery rate R 21 (having an activation energy of about 0.3 eV) on temperature is also reported, but the capture rates of the metastable level are only known to be much smaller than those of the ground level (Delaye & Sugg, 1994), without any indication on the value of their ratio. In comparison, the capture rates of muptiply charged recombination centers have been studied in more detail, and several transition metal impurities in silicon, germanium and silicon carbide have exhibited a favourable ratio of the higher level cross section to the lower level one (K 2 /K 1 > 1, see section 6) (Grillenberger, 2004;Knack et al, 2002;Sachse et al, 2000;Shiraishi et al, 1999;Wertheim, 1959;Yarykin et al, 1999). Here we present a study on a center which is likely the most deeply and the longest studied of these, namely Nickel in Germanium.…”

The Interaction of Hydrogen with Deep Level Defects in Silicon

“…The amount of hydrogen introduced is very low and is confined to the surface region. Much of the hydrogen is bound to P donors or B acceptors present in the material but annealing under a reverse bias (RBA) has the effect of driving the hydrogen deeper into the sample [164,165,166,167,168,169]. This method is particularly useful for a study of hydrogen related defects which dissociate around room temperature.…”