Experiments and simulation on diffusion and activation of codoped with arsenic and phosphorous germanium

Abstract

We report arsenic and phosphorus diffusion experiments and activation related phenomena in codoped germanium substrates utilizing conventional thermal annealing. Chemical profiles were obtained by secondary ion mass spectroscopy, sheet resistance was estimated by the Van der Pauw method. Our study covers the temperature range from 600 to 750 °C. We accurately described the dopant profiles with a quadratic dependence of the dopants diffusion coefficient on the free electron concentration. In our simulations we considered the dopant pile-up near the surface and dopant loss owing to outdiffusion during the annealing. Although the double donor codoping technique exhibited no advantage over monodoping with P concerning the level of activation and junction depth, it was interesting to observe the different diffusion behavior of the two dopants. Whereas the diffusion of As indicates a retardation under codoping the diffusion of P remains either unaffected or is slightly enhanced by codoping. The activation level of the codoped samples remains lower compared to the respective monodoped samples, except for the highest annealing temperature.