Kai Carstens

Surface passivation of heavily boron or phosphorus doped crystalline silicon utilizing amorphous silicon

Excellent surface passivation of heavily boron or phosphorus doped crystalline silicon is presented utilizing undoped hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H). For passivating boron doped crystalline silicon surfaces, amorphous silicon needs to be deposited at low temperatures 150 °C≤Tdep≤200 °C, leading to a high bandgap. In contrast, low bandgap amorphous silicon causes an inferior surface passivation of highly boron doped crystalline silicon. Boron doping in crystalline silicon leads to a shift of the Fermi energy towards the valence band maximum in the undoped a-Si:H. A simulation, implementing dangling bond defects according to the defect pool model, shows this shift in the undoped a-Si:H passivation to be more pronounced if the a-Si:H has a lower bandgap. Hence, the inferior passivation of boron doped surfaces with low bandgap amorphous silicon stems from a lower silicon-hydrogen bond energy due to this shift of the Fermi energy. Hydrogen effusion and ellipsometry measurements support our interpretation.

Band gap narrowing models tested on low recombination phosphorus laser doped silicon

This manuscript discusses bandgap narrowing models for highly phosphorus doped silicon. We simulate the recombination current pre-factor J0,phos in PC1Dmod 6.2 of measured doping profiles and apply the theoretical band gap narrowing model of Schenk [J. Appl. Phys. 84, 3684 (1998)] and an empirical band gap narrowing model of Yan and Cuevas [J. Appl. Phys. 114, 044508 (2013)]. The recombination current pre-factor of unpassivated and passivated samples measured by the photo conductance measurement and simulated J0,phos agrees well, when the band gap narrowing model of Yan and Cuevas is applied. With the band gap narrowing model of Schenk, the simulation cannot reproduce the measured J0,phos. Furthermore, the recombination current pre-factor of our phosphorus laser doped silicon samples are comparable with furnace diffused samples. There is no indication of recombination active defects, thus no laser induced defects in the diffused volume.