Electron-irradiation damage in antimony-doped silicon

Abstract

The electron trapping centers induced by electron irradiation in antimony-doped silicon have been studied by deep-level transient capacitance spectroscopy. Four such traps—E1(Ec−0.17 eV), E2(Ec−0.22 eV), E3(Ec−0.28 eV), and E4(Ec−0.39 eV) —are visible in the spectrum. Of particular interest is the antimony-vacancy pair, E4. The capture cross section for majority carriers at this level is 4.5×10−17 cm−2 at 234 K. The annealing studies of the Sb-V complex indicate first-order kinetics with activation energies of 1.29 and 1.62 eV for the neutral and negative charge states of the complex, respectively. Also, this dependence on the charge state results in the annealing rate at 175 °C being an order of magnitude greater when the Sb-V complex is in the neutral charge state than it is when the complex is in the negative charge state.