Compensating impurity in high purity silicon single crystal investigated by photo-thermal ionization spectroscopy

Abstract

The optimum photo-thermal ionization range near liquid helium temperature for the shallow impurities in n type high purity silicon single crystal was determined experimentally. At temperature within this range, the high resolution photo-thermal ionization spectra (PTIS) of this sample were measured. Positive PTIS responses from the majority residual impurity phosphor (P) and compensating impurity boron (B) were observed by simultaneously irradiating the sample with far infrared and band-edge light. Under action of applied external magnetic fields, the positive response from compensating impurity B changes to negative response. The posibility of these phenomena being the result of temperature effect was excluded, which revealed the deficiency of Darken model and supported the model of rapid recombination of minority carriers for PTIS response of compensating impurity in elemental semiconductors.