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Increased Conductivity in P-Type Hydrogenated Amorphous Silicon
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2011
Abstract
The low conductivity of B-doped a-Si:H is usually attributed to the fact that only a small fraction of the boron is tetrahedrally coordinated. In the presence of hydrogen, that small fraction can be inactivated via the acceptor-neutralization process that was described for the case of B-doped crystalline Si. When a B-doped sample of a-Si:H was annealed to drive away hydrogen near the boron atoms, the conductivity increases by a factor of 600. Although a-Si:H can be doped either n-type or p-type, the doping efficiency is orders of magnitude poorer than in crystalline Si. In fact the doping efficiency of boron is one order of magnitude lower than that of phosphorus. Several models account for the low doping efficiency of a-Si:H, the most plausible being the location of B in a trigonal site, i.e. surrounded by three Si-atoms as shown in Fig. 1. Such a center is neutral and cannot act as an acceptor. The present work is an offshoot of our study of the hydrogenation of dangling bonds in crystalline Si (1). The awareness that H ties to a Si dangling bond more strongly than another Si-atom led us to passivate the numerous dangling bonds on the surface a Si-crystal. Then, we passivated dangling bonds in grain boundaries and in dislocations and we showed that ion implantation damage also could be neutralized by atomic hydrogen thus removing non-radiative recombination centers and allowing the luminescent transitions to become more efficient.
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- Copyright © Materials Research Society 1986
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