Controlling iron and copper precipitation in silicon wafers

This thesis studies the two most common transition metals in silicon – copper and iron. The purpose of the experiments and theoretical calculations presented in this thesis is to increase the current knowledge of the precipitation behavior of these metals under different processing conditions. The study also includes the development of recombination lifetime methods for impurity characterization in silicon. A method to measure trace copper contamination in silicon using the microwave photoconductivity decay is proposed. The method is based on the observation that copper precipitates can be created using light activation. It is shown that external charge on wafer surfaces can reduce the copper out-diffusion, which extends the applicability of the method. Moreover, oxide precipitates are found to increase the sensitivity of the method. An analytical solution to the current continuity equation for excess carriers in an epitaxial structure under time dependent optical excitation is derived. In addition, some analytical approximations are developed and numerical calculations are made to check their accuracy. The built-in potential between the epitaxial layer and the substrate is taken into account and also the light induced barrier lowering is included in the model. The barrier lowering is found to be noticeable and can affect the effective lifetime by up to two orders of magnitude. Several annealing profiles and contamination levels are used to study the iron gettering behavior at varying supersaturation levels. It was found that the gettering efficiency depends strongly on the initial iron concentration and considerably high supersaturation is needed to initiate the gettering. The results are discussed from the perspective of thermodynamics. The thermal stability of internally gettered iron is studied experimentally by deep level transient spectroscopy. The experiments reveal that the dissolution is a reaction limited process. The simulations of iron re-dissolution show that instead of simulating only the final cooling, it is important to simulate the whole thermal cycle. This is important since low thermal budgets are becoming more and more common in the IC technology.reviewe

Formation kinetics of copper-related light-induced degradation in crystalline silicon

Light-induced degradation (LID) is a deleterious effect in crystalline silicon, which is considered to originate from recombination-active boron-oxygen complexes and/or copper-related defects. Although LID in both cases appears as a fast initial decay followed by a second slower degradation, we show that the time constant of copper-related degradation increases with increasing boron concentration in contrast to boron-oxygen LID. Temperature-dependent analysis reveals that the defect formation is limited by copper diffusion. Finally, interface defect density measurements confirm that copper-related LID is dominated by recombination in the wafer bulk.Peer reviewe

Accelerated light-induced degradation for detecting copper contamination in p-type silicon

Copper is a harmful metal impurity that significantly impacts the performance of silicon-based devices if present in active regions. In this contribution, we propose a fast method consisting of simultaneous illumination and annealing for the detection of copper contamination in p-type silicon. Our results show that, within minutes, such method is capable of producing a significant reduction of the minority carrier lifetime. A spatial distribution map of copper contamination can then be obtained through the lifetime values measured before and after degradation. In order to separate the effect of the light-activated copper defects from the other metastable complexes in low resistivity Cz-silicon, we carried out a dark anneal at 200 C, which is known to fully recover the boron-oxygen defect. Similar to the boron-oxygen behavior, we show that the dark anneal also recovers the copper defects. However, the recovery is only partial and it can be used to identify the possible presence of copper contamination.Peer reviewe

Role of copper in light induced minority-carrier lifetime degradation of silicon

We investigate the impact of copper on the light induced minority-carrier lifetime degradation in various crystalline silicon materials. We demonstrate here that the presence of neither boron nor oxygen is necessary for the degradation effect. In addition, our experiments reveal that copper contamination alone can cause the light induced minority-carrier lifetime degradation.Peer reviewe

Spin disorder scattering in a ferromagnetic insulator-on-graphene structure

We theoretically study the transport properties of a single graphene layer between two insulating materials, i.e., a ferromagnetic EuO thin film and a nonmagnetic SiC substrate. An exchange interaction between the charge carrier spins in graphene and the localized magnetic moments in the ferromagnetic insulator is assumed. This proximity effect and the large spin fluctuations at temperatures close to the ferromagnetic transition temperature TC lead to spin disorder scattering, which is calculated using a Green's function technique. Numerical results indicate that at temperatures close to TC the contribution of the spin disorder scattering to the total electron mobility is clearly observable even in the case of a weak exchange interaction and a low background mobility of the graphene layer. This enables the experimental determination of the exchange interaction parameter using the present model and a simple resistivity measurement.Peer reviewe

Meeting Global Cooling Demand with Photovoltaics during the 21st Century

Space conditioning, and cooling in particular, is a key factor in human productivity and well-being across the globe. During the 21st century, global cooling demand is expected to grow significantly due to the increase in wealth and population in sunny nations across the globe and the advance of global warming. The same locations that see high demand for cooling are also ideal for electricity generation via photovoltaics (PV). Despite the apparent synergy between cooling demand and PV generation, the potential of the cooling sector to sustain PV generation has not been assessed on a global scale. Here, we perform a global assessment of increased PV electricity adoption enabled by the residential cooling sector during the 21st century. Already today, utilizing PV production for cooling could facilitate an additional installed PV capacity of approximately 540 GW, more than the global PV capacity of today. Using established scenarios of population and income growth, as well as accounting for future global warming, we further project that the global residential cooling sector could sustain an added PV capacity between 20-200 GW each year for most of the 21st century, on par with the current global manufacturing capacity of 100 GW. Furthermore, we find that without storage, PV could directly power approximately 50% of cooling demand, and that this fraction is set to increase from 49% to 56% during the 21st century, as cooling demand grows in locations where PV and cooling have a higher synergy. With this geographic shift in demand, the potential of distributed storage also grows. We simulate that with a 1 m$^3$ water-based latent thermal storage per household, the fraction of cooling demand met with PV would increase from 55% to 70% during the century. These results show that the synergy between cooling and PV is notable and could significantly accelerate the growth of the global PV industry

Room-temperature method for minimizing light-induced degradation in crystalline silicon

Although light-induced degradation (LID) in crystalline silicon is attributed to the formation of boron-oxygen recombination centers, copper contamination of silicon has recently been observed to result in similar degradation. As positively charged interstitialcopper stays mobile at room temperature in silicon, we show that the bulk copper concentration can be reduced by depositing a large negative charge onto the wafer surface. Consequently, light-induced degradation is reduced significantly in both low- and high-resistivity boron-doped Czochralski-grown silicon.Peer reviewe

Gettering of Iron in Silicon Solar Cells With Implanted Emitters

We present here experimental results on the gettering of iron in Czochralski-grown silicon by phosphorus implantation. The gettering efficiency and the gettering mechanisms in a high resistivity implanted emitter are determined as a function of both initial iron level and gettering anneal. The results show that gettering in implanted emitters can be efficient if precipitation at the emitter is activated. This requires low gettering temperatures and/or high initial contamination level. The fastest method to getter iron from the bulk is to rapidly nucleate iron precipitates before the gettering anneal. Here, this was achieved by a fast ramp to the room temperature in between the implantation anneal and the gettering anneal.Peer reviewe

Meeting Global Cooling Demand with Photovoltaics during the 21st Century

Space conditioning, and cooling in particular, is a key factor in human productivity and well-being across the globe. During the 21st century, global cooling demand is expected to grow significantly due to the increase in wealth and population in sunny nations across the globe and the advance of global warming. The same locations that see high demand for cooling are also ideal for electricity generation via photovoltaics (PV). Despite the apparent synergy between cooling demand and PV generation, the potential of the cooling sector to sustain PV generation has not been assessed on a global scale. Here, we perform a global assessment of increased PV electricity adoption enabled by the residential cooling sector during the 21st century. Already today, utilizing PV production for cooling could facilitate an additional installed PV capacity of approximately 540 GW, more than the global PV capacity of today. Using established scenarios of population and income growth, as well as accounting for future global warming, we further project that the global residential cooling sector could sustain an added PV capacity between 20-200 GW each year for most of the 21st century, on par with the current global manufacturing capacity of 100 GW. Furthermore, we find that without storage, PV could directly power approximately 50% of cooling demand, and that this fraction is set to increase from 49% to 56% during the 21st century, as cooling demand grows in locations where PV and cooling have a higher synergy. With this geographic shift in demand, the potential of distributed storage also grows. We simulate that with a 1 m$^3$ water-based latent thermal storage per household, the fraction of cooling demand met with PV would increase from 55% to 70% during the century. These results show that the synergy between cooling and PV is notable and could significantly accelerate the growth of the global PV industry

Silicon Surface Passivation by Al2O3: Effect of ALD Reactants

We have studied the surface passivation of p- and n-type silicon by thermal atomic layer deposited (ALD) Al2O3. The main emphasis is on different ALD reactant combinations and especially on using ozone as an oxidant. Thermal stability of Al2O3 will also be briefly addressed. Our results show that in p-type CZ-Si Al2O3 leads to much higher passivation than thermal oxidation, independent of the reactants. The best minority carrier lifetimes are measured when a combination of Al2O3 and TiO2 is used. In n-type CZ-Si similar results are obtained except the choice of reactants seems to be more crucial. However, the combination of Al2O3 and TiO2 results again in the best passivation with measured lifetimes well above 10 ms corresponding surface recombination velocities of ∼2 cm/s. Finally, we demonstrate that Al2O3 passivation is also applicable in high resistivity n-type FZ-Si and in ∼1 Ωcm p-type multicrystalline Si.Peer reviewe