Direct Measurement of Electron Emission from Defect States at Silicon Grain Boundaries

The first direct measurements of charge emission from silicon grain-boundary defect states have been made by monitoring the recovery of the nonequilibrium grain-boundary barrier capacitance. The density of grain-boundary states obtained in this fashion is in excellent agreement with the values found from deconvoluting room-temperature $I-V$ data. These data are shown to suggest strongly that the double-depletion-layer/thermal-emission model gives a good description of silicon grain boundaries.