Similarities in the electrical properties of transition metal–hydrogen complexes in silicon

Hydrogen in semiconductors: From basic physics to technology

“…The same trend is seen for Pd-and Ni-H complexes. It is interesting to note that Cu in Ge exhibits a similar shift with hydrogen [35], the Cu-H 3 complex is electrically passive, very similar to our results on Cu-, Ag-and Au-H complexes in Si [9,32]. Calculations by Jones et al confirm the number and level position of the energy levels for a number of our TM-H complexes [36,37].…”

“…In particular, in low-cost solar-cells hydrogen was thought to eliminate recombination centers. However, in Si most of the detrimental transition metals form efficiently with hydrogen new electrical active defects [9]. Examples for the interaction of transition metals with hydrogen will be presented.…”

Silicon device processing in H-ambients: H-diffusion mechanisms and influence on electronic properties

“…The TM-H complexes with Ti, Co, Ag, Pt, Pd, Ni, and Cu have been detected primarily by deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS) analyses. [28][29][30] In some cases, equilibrium structures for TM-H complexes have been calculated. 31 Interestingly, the DLTS data do not verify that the complexes are electrically inactive.…”

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.…”

“…Hydrogenation of substitutional TM centres can shift the position of the deep levels due to the impurity [164,165,166,167,168,169,170,171,172,173,174].…”