Passivation and depassivation of silicon dangling bonds at the Si/SiO2 interface by atomic hydrogen

Abstract
Atomic hydrogen is found to simultaneously passivate and depassivate silicon dangling bonds at the Si(111)/SiO2 interface at room temperature via the reactions Pb+H0PbH and PbH+H0Pb+H2. The passivation reaction occurs more efficiently keeping the steady‐state Pb density at a low value of only 3–6×1011 cm−2 during atomic hydrogen exposure. This low Pb density can only account for a small fraction of the total number of interface states produced by atomic hydrogen.