Effect of oxygen and copper on the defect cluster in neutron-irradiated p-type silicon

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The effect of the oxygen and acceptor concentration and Cu contamination on the defect clusters, found to be produced in p‐type silicon by neutron irradiation at room temperature without enclosing the samples by Cd plating, was investigated by using electrical conductivity and Hall effect measurements. The insulating volumes of the defect clusters and the barrier heights formed by the cluster‐space charge regions were obtained by Gossick's cluster model. The insulating volumes and barrier heights depended on neither oxygen concentration nor Cu contamination. The insulating volumes decreased with the 0.72 power of the acceptor concentration and the barrier heights increased with the 0.28 power of the acceptor concentration. The acceptor concentration dependency of the insulating volumes could be simply explained by Gossick's cluster model. The recovery of the barrier height was similar to that of the light‐sensitive defects by Stein and the trap centers by Nakashima and Inuishi. From the isothermal annealing of the barrier height, the activation energy was found to be about 1.1 eV for both the noncontaminated and Cu‐contaminated samples. This activation energy corresponds to the liberating energy of vacancies from clusters. In isochronal annealing above 210°C, the recovery of the carrier concentration showed the effect of the Cu contamination which could not be observed after irradiation.