Noncontact Characterization for Carrier Recombination Center Related to Si-SiO2 Interface

Abstract
The energy levels of carrier recombination centers originating from an Si-SiO2 interface were investigated for the first time by means of a noncontact and nondestructive laser/microwave photoconductance technique. An energy level of the carrier recombination center around 0.2 eV, which can be attributed to a trivalent silicon defect, i.e., the P b0 center, was obtained from the temperature dependence of the Shockley-Read-Hall lifetime for (100) silicon wafers with native or thermal oxide.