Hydrogen plasma treatments for passivation of amorphous-crystalline silicon-heterojunctions on surfaces promoting epitaxy
- 25 March 2013
- journal article
- research article
- Published by AIP Publishing in Applied Physics Letters
- Vol. 102 (12), 122106
- https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4798292
Abstract
The impact of post-deposition hydrogen plasma treatment (HPT) on passivation in amorphous/crystalline silicon (a-Si:H/c-Si) interfaces is investigated. Combining low temperature a-Si:H deposition and successive HPT, a high minority carrier lifetime is achieved on c-Si 〈100〉, which is otherwise prone to epitaxial growth and thus inferior passivation. It is shown that the passivation improvement stems from diffusion of hydrogen atoms to the heterointerface and subsequent dangling bond passivation. Concomitantly, the a-Si:H hydrogen density increases, leading to band gap widening and void formation, while the film disorder is not increased. Thus, HPT allows for a-Si:H band gap and a-Si:H/c-Si band offset engineering.
Keywords
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