Effect of nitrogen doping on the minority carrier lifetime in Czochralski silicon

✍ Scribed by Can Cui; Deren Yang; Xuegong Yu; Xiangyang Ma; Liben Li; Duanlin Que

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 121 KB
• Volume: 66
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0167-9317
• DOI: 10.1016/s0167-9317(02)00949-8

✦ Synopsis

The effect of nitrogen doping on the minority carrier lifetime in Czochralski silicon (CZ-Si) passivated in dry O at different temperatures was studied. It was found that the most effective passivation temperature of 2 nitrogen-doped CZ silicon (NCZ-Si) wafers was 1000 8C, the same as that of CZ-Si wafers, but the most effective passivation time was 0.5 h, which is shorter than that of CZ-Si wafers (1 h). Furthermore, with increasing anneal time, the minority carrier lifetime of NCZ-Si decreased more quickly than that of CZ-Si, while interstitial oxygen in NCZ-Si precipitated more heavily. The experiments also showed that, during two-step (650 8C 1 1050 8C) annealing, the minority carrier lifetime of NCZ-Si decreased significantly due to oxygen precipitation. It can be concluded that the crystal quality of as-grown NCZ-Si is similar to that of as-grown CZ-Si, however the minority carrier lifetime of NCZ-Si decreased more rapidly than that of CZ-Si during thermal cycles because of nitrogen enhancing oxygen precipitates.