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New Perspectives on Surface Passivation: Understanding the Si-Al2O3 Interface pp 97–139Cite as

Effect of Surface Dopant Concentration

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Abstract

The effectiveness of Al\(_{2}\)O\(_{3}\) surface passivation depends not only on the processing history of the film, but also on the properties of the semiconductor surface on which it is deposited. In this chapter we examine the influence of surface dopant type and concentration on the recombination rate at Al\(_{2}\)O\(_{3}\)-passivated surfaces.

It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.

—William of Ockham

Summa Totius Logicae

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Note that some authors use \(S_{n{0}}\) or \(S_{p{0}}\) to refer to what is essentially an effective surface recombination velocity including the influence of charge, identical to our \(S_{\textit{eff}}\). This is because they make the implicit assumption that \(Q_{\textit{tot}} = 0\), so that \(S_{\textit{eff}} = S_{n{0}}\) or \(S_{p{0}}\) from (7.1). It should also be noted that \(S_{n{0}}\) and \(S_{p{0}}\) do not bear a simple relation to the parameter \(S_0\) measured at depleted surfaces in the absence of illumination [2, 32] (for example via the pulsed MIS capacitor technique [33]) since in the latter case the emission-related terms in (2.18) become significant and only defects near the middle of the bandgap effectively contribute to recombination or generation.

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  1. Research School of Engineering, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

    Lachlan E. Black

  2. Department of Applied Physics, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Lachlan E. Black

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Black, L.E. (2016). Effect of Surface Dopant Concentration. In: New Perspectives on Surface Passivation: Understanding the Si-Al2O3 Interface. Springer Theses. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32521-7_7

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