E Center in Silicon Has a Donor Level in the Band Gap

A. Nylandsted Larsen, A. Mesli, K. Bonde Nielsen, H. Kortegaard Nielsen, L. Dobaczewski, J. Adey, R. Jones, D. W. Palmer, P. R. Briddon, and S. Öberg
Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 106402 – Published 7 September 2006

Abstract

It has been an accepted fact for more than 40 years that the E center in Si (the group-V impurity—vacancy pair)—one of the most studied defects in semiconductors—has only one energy level in the band gap: namely, the acceptor level at about 0.45 eV below the conduction band. We now demonstrate that it has a second level, situated in the lower half of the band gap at 0.27 eV above the valence band. The existence of this level, having a donor character, is disclosed by a combination of different transient-capacitance techniques and electronic-structure calculations. The finding seriously questions some diffusion-modeling approaches performed in the past.

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  • Received 8 June 2006

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.97.106402

©2006 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

A. Nylandsted Larsen1, A. Mesli2, K. Bonde Nielsen1, H. Kortegaard Nielsen1, L. Dobaczewski3, J. Adey4, R. Jones4, D. W. Palmer4, P. R. Briddon5, and S. Öberg6

  • 1Institute of Physics and Astronomy, University of Aarhus, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
  • 2Institut d’Electronique du Solide et des Systèmes, CNRS/ULP, Strasbourg Cédex F-67037, France
  • 3Institute of Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, al. Lotników 32/46, 02-668 Warsaw, Poland
  • 4School of Physics, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4QL, United Kingdom
  • 5Physics Centre, School of Natural Science, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, United Kingdom
  • 6Department of Mathematics, Luleå University of Technology, SE-97187 Luleå, Sweden

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Issue

Vol. 97, Iss. 10 — 8 September 2006

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