Electrical studies of Fe-related defect complexes in silicon

Abstract

Iron (Fe) is an important impurity in solar-grade silicon which contributes substantially in degrading the efficiency of solar cells. The degradation is mainly caused by the Fe atoms situating at an unperturbed tetrahedral interstitial sites (Fei) in the silicon crystal, consequently acting as a recombination center. By altering the position and the neighbouring environment at which the Fe atoms reside, there are opportunities in minimizing or neutralizing the electrical activity of Fe. Furthermore, utilizing the high mobility of Fe, one can increase the performance of a device by accumulating the Fe atoms from critical regions into regions where Fe can be tolerated. These approaches can help in realizing high efficient solar cells based on cheap and highly Fe-contaminated silicon. In this work, we have investigated the interaction between Fe and defects relevant to solar cells, using mainly electrical characterization methods such as capacitance-voltage measurement, deep level transient spectroscopy and admittance spectroscopy. From the study of potential hydrogen passivation of Fe, hydrogen was introduced through wet chemical etching and further driven to a defined region. Using depth profiles, it is found that incorporation of hydrogen stimulates the dissociation of the iron-boron (Fe-B) pair, releasing and resulting in the unwanted Fei. At the same time, no passivation of Fe by hydrogen has been observed. On the investigation of the mechanism of phosphorus gettering of metal impurities, vacancies have been generated through proton-irradiation. The resulting irradiation-induced defects were examined for reactions with Fe after heat treatments. Based on the evolution of defect concentrations by isochronal annealings, it is found that Fe interacts with the divacancy and the vacancy-oxygen complexes, forming deep levels of 0.28 eV and 0.34 eV above the valence band edge (EV), respectively. In the search for substitutional Fe to investigate its electrical activity and thermal stability, measurements were performed around the projected range of Fe-implantations after rapid thermal annealing. A shallow acceptor is uncovered with an energy level position of EV +0.06 eV and a defect concentration closely following the calculated concentration of the Fe-implantation dose. However, chemical analysis with secondary ion-mass spectrometry shows out-diffusion of Fe from the region around the projected range after annealing. This suggests that the formation of the shallow acceptor is only assisted/promoted by Fe without Fe being a part of the final complex.