Indium-hydrogen complexes in silicon and germanium under compression and tension

Abstract

The response of hydrogen-acceptor complexes in silicon and germanium to the application of uniaxial mechanical stress was studied by means of the perturbed angular correlation technique. This hyperfine interaction technique is sensitive to the microscopic structure of the immediate lattice environment of the probe atom. For the measurements, the probe¹¹¹In was introduced into Si and Ge crystals by ion implantation at room temperature. After annealing, the radioactive probe atom¹¹¹In acts as an acceptor in the elemental semiconductors Si and Ge and as such can easily be passivated by hydrogen indiffusion. The resulting In-H complex was subsequently exposed to uniaxial compressive and tensile stress, which was produced by bending the crystals along the three major lattice directions 〈100〉, 〈110〉 and 〈111〉. It was found that the application of uniaxial mechanical stress causes no change in the population of the four equivalent bond centred H sites surrounding the In acceptor. Evidence was found for a large mismatch of the lattice parameters between the passivated In implanted layer and the surrounding pure Si.