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Optical and electrical properties of textured sulfur-hyperdoped silicon: a thermal annealing study

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Abstract

When elemental sulfur was used to hyperdope crystalline silicon to a supersaturated density of ~1020 cm−3, it was found to enhance the sub-bandgap light absorptance of the silicon substrate from 0 up to 70 % when combined with the antireflection properties of the surface dome structures that were formed by surface texturing. These textured sulfur-hyperdoped silicon samples were then thermally annealed at various temperatures, and the effects of the annealing on each sample’s optical and electrical properties were investigated. In the silicon sub-bandgap wavelength range, the absorptance of the textured hyperdoped silicon was attenuated more slowly than that of a non-textured sample, and the modulation of its reflectance and transmittance properties was attributed to the density damping of the optically absorbing state. In addition, the optically absorbing state can release more electrons than the optically non-absorbing state, and the former state also has a stronger ability to scatter electrons than the latter.

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Acknowledgements

KFW would like to thank Hezhu Shao of the Ningbo Institute of Industrial Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, for helpful discussions, and Professor Michael J. Aziz of Harvard University for his flat hyperdoped silicon sample. This work was supported by the NSFC (Grant No. 61204002), and by the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2012CB934200).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Computational Materials Science, School of Physics and Electronics, Henan University, Kaifeng, 475004, People’s Republic of China

    Ke-Fan Wang, Pingan Liu & Yuanxu Wang

  2. Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Materials Science, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100083, People’s Republic of China

    Ke-Fan Wang, Shengchun Qu & Zhanguo Wang

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  1. Ke-Fan Wang
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  2. Pingan Liu
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  3. Shengchun Qu
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  4. Yuanxu Wang
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  5. Zhanguo Wang
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Correspondence to Shengchun Qu or Yuanxu Wang.

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Wang, KF., Liu, P., Qu, S. et al. Optical and electrical properties of textured sulfur-hyperdoped silicon: a thermal annealing study. J Mater Sci 50, 3391–3398 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-015-8895-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-015-8895-2

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