The Library
Increasing minority carrier lifetime in as-grown multicrystalline silicon by low temperature internal gettering
Tools
Tools
Tools
Al-Amin, Mohammad and Murphy, John D. (2016) Increasing minority carrier lifetime in as-grown multicrystalline silicon by low temperature internal gettering. Journal of Applied Physics, 119 (23). 235704. doi:10.1063/1.4954010
|
PDF
WRAP_1.4954010.pdf - Published Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Download (7Mb) | Preview |
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4954010
Abstract
We report a systematic study into the effects of long low temperature (≤500 °C) annealing on the lifetime and interstitial iron distributions in as-grown multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) from different ingot height positions. Samples are characterised in terms of dislocation density, and lifetime and interstitial iron concentration measurements are made at every stage using a temporary room temperature iodine-ethanol surface passivation scheme. Our measurement procedure allows these properties to be monitored during processing in a pseudo in situ way. Sufficient annealing at 300 °C and 400 °C increases lifetime in all cases studied, and annealing at 500 °C was only found to improve relatively poor wafers from the top and bottom of the block. We demonstrate that lifetime in poor as-grown wafers can be improved substantially by a low cost process in the absence of any bulk passivation which might result from a dielectric surface film. Substantial improvements are found in bottom wafers, for which annealing at 400 °C for 35 h increases lifetime from 5.5 μs to 38.7 μs. The lifetime of top wafers is improved from 12.1 μs to 23.8 μs under the same conditions. A correlation between interstitial iron concentration reduction and lifetime improvement is found in these cases. Surprisingly, although the interstitial iron concentration exceeds the expected solubility values, low temperature annealing seems to result in an initial increase in interstitial iron concentration, and any subsequent decay is a complex process driven not only by diffusion of interstitial iron.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects: | Q Science > QC Physics T Technology > TK Electrical engineering. Electronics Nuclear engineering |
|||||||||||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Science > Engineering | |||||||||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Semiconductor wafers -- Testing, Getters, Annealing of crystals | |||||||||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of Applied Physics | |||||||||||||||
| Publisher: | American Institute of Physics | |||||||||||||||
| ISSN: | 0021-8979 | |||||||||||||||
| Official Date: | 17 June 2016 | |||||||||||||||
| Dates: |
|
|||||||||||||||
| Volume: | 119 | |||||||||||||||
| Number: | 23 | |||||||||||||||
| Article Number: | 235704 | |||||||||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1063/1.4954010 | |||||||||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | |||||||||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | |||||||||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access | |||||||||||||||
| Grant number: | and EP/M024911/1 (EPSRC), | |||||||||||||||
| RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
|
|||||||||||||||
| Related URLs: |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year
