Formation and origin of the dominating electron trap in irradiated p-type silicon

Deep level transient spectroscopy and minority-carrier transient spectroscopy (MCTS) have been applied to study electron-irradiated and proton-irradiated p-type Si samples with boron concentrations in the range of 6 x 10(13)-2 x 10(15) cm(-3). Both impurity-lean epitaxially grown samples and Czochralski grown samples have been investigated where some of the epitaxial samples were subjected to oxygenation prior to the irradiation in order to controllably vary the oxygen concentration. The MCTS measurements reveal a dominant electron trap at E(c)-0.25 eV, where E(c) is the conduction-band edge, commonly ascribed to a boron-interstitial oxygen-interstitial complex (B(i)O(i)). The amplitude of the level increases linearly with the irradiation dose and it anneals out at similar to 175 degrees C but shows, however, no correlation with the boron concentration. The level is dominant even at doping concentrations in the 10(13) cm(-3) range and, irrespective of the oxygen concentration, the generation rate decreases by almost 50% as the boron concentration increases by a factor of similar to 30. Comparison with numerical modeling reveals that these results are not consistent with the commonly accepted model of defect reactions in irradiated p-type Si. Different reasons for this discrepancy are discussed, such as an incomplete defect reaction model and alternative identifications of the E(c)-0.25 eV level.