Minority carrier lifetime

The situation is very different in indirect gap materials where phonons must be involved to conserve momentum. Radiative recombination is inefficient, resulting in long lifetimes. The minority carrier lifetimes in Si reach many ms, again in tire absence of defects. It should be noted tliat long minority carrier lifetimes imply long diffusion lengtlis. Minority carrier lifetime can be used as a convenient quality benchmark of a semiconductor. 

Germanium single crystals intended for electronic apphcations are usuaHy specified according to conductivity type, dopant, resistivity, orientation, and maximum dislocation density. They may be specified to be lineage-free unless the specified resistivity is below about 0.05 H-cm. Minority carrier lifetime and majority carrier mobHity are occasionaHy specified. 

Under Httle or no illumination,/ must be minimized for optimum performance. The factor B is 1.0 for pure diffusion current and approaches 2.0 as depletion and surface-mode currents become important. Generally, high crystal quality for long minority carrier lifetime and low surface-state density reduce the dark current density which is the sum of the diffusion, depletion, tunneling, and surface currents. The ZM product is typically measured at zero bias and is expressed as RM. The ideal photodiode noise current can be expressed as follows ... 

Gamma radiation produces free carriers much as does visible light (36). High energy protons and electrons produce defects that reduce minority carrier lifetime according to equation 8 ... 

Silicon wafer has been extensively used in the semiconductor industry. CMP of silicon is one of the key technologies to obtain a smooth, defect-free, and high reflecting silicon surfaces in microelectronic device patterning. Silicon surface qualities have a direct effect on physical properties, such as breakdown point, interface state, and minority carrier lifetime, etc. Cook et al. [54] considered the chemical processes involved in the polishing of glass and extended it to the polishing of silicon wafer. They presented the chemical process which occurs by the interaction of the silicon layer and the... 

RJ Nelson and RG Sobers, Minority-carrier lifetime and internal quantum efficiency of surface-free GaAs, J. Appl. Phys., 49 6103-6108, 1978. 

Contamination of silicon wafers by heavy metals is a major cause of low yields in the manufacture of electronic devices. Concentrations in the order of 1011 cm-3 [Ha2] are sufficient to affect the device performance, because impurity atoms constitute recombination centers for minority carriers and thereby reduce their lifetime [Scl7]. In addition, precipitates caused by contaminants may affect gate oxide quality. Note that a contamination of 1011 cnT3 corresponds to a pinhead of iron (1 mm3) dissolved in a swimming pool of silicon (850 m3). Such minute contamination levels are far below the detection limit of the standard analytical techniques used in chemistry. The best way to detect such traces of contaminants is to measure the induced change in electronic properties itself, such as the oxide defect density or the minority carrier lifetime, respectively diffusion length. 

N. K. Dutta, Radiative Transitions in GaAs and Other III-V Compounds R. K. Ahrenkiel, Minority-Carrier Lifetime in III-V Semiconductors T. Furuta, High Field Minority Electron Transport in p-GaAs M. S. Lundstrom, Minority-Carrier Transport in III-V Semiconductors R A. Abram, Elfects of Heavy Doping and High Excitation on the Band Structure of GaAs D. Yevick and W. Bardyszewski, An Introduction to Non-Equilibrium Many-Body Analyses of Optical Processes in III-V Semiconductors... 

The equilibrium lever relation, np= n , can be regarded from a chemical kinetics perspective as the result of a balance between the generation and recombination of electrons and holes (21). In extrinsic semiconductors recombination is assisted by chemical defects, such as transition metals, which introduce new eneigy levels in the energy gap. The recombination rate in extrinsic semiconductors is limited by the lifetime of minority carriers which, according to the equilibrium lever relation, have much lower concentrations than majority carriers. Thus, for a >-type semiconductor where electrons are the minority carrier, the recombination rate is A /t. An = n — n0 is the increase of the electron concentration over its value in thermal equilibrium, nQy and Xn is the minority carrier lifetime. This assumes low level injection where An is much smaller than pQy the equilibrium majority carrier concentration. 

A high gain transistor requires a nearly equal to 1. In the absence of collector junction breakdown, a is the product of the base transport factor and emitter efficiency. The base transport factor, aT, is the fraction of the minority current (electrons for an n-p—n transistor) that reaches the collector. ocT 1 — W2 /2L, where W is the base width, is the distance between emitter and collector junctions and Lg is the minority carrier diffusion length in the base. High gain transistors require a thin base as well as a long minority carrier lifetime for a large Lg. Because aT is >0.995 in modem transistors, there is little room for improvement. The emitter efficiency, the fraction of emitter current due to minority carriers injected into the base instead of the emitter,... 

Fig. 5. Energy above the valence band of levels reported in the literature for GaP. Arrangement and notations are the same as in Fig. 4. Abbreviations for experimental methods not defined in Fig. 4. are temperature dependence of resistivity (RT), temperature dependence of minority-carrier lifetime (LT), Hall effect (H), and photostimulated electron paramagnetic resonance (PEPR).

Hamilton et al. (1979) have shown that a level at 0.75 eV above the valence band (M1 in Figs. 5 and 7) is the dominant recombination center in epitaxial layers and controls the minority-carrier lifetime in -type GaP. Another state at v + 0.92 eV has been shown to be caused by the persistent presence of Ni in vapor phase epitaxial (VPE) GaP (Dean et al, 1977). 

Other indirect methods for measuring lifetimes often involve device structures such as p-n junctions. The electron-beam-induced current (EBIC) technique, for example, measures the increase injunction current as an impinging electron beam moves close to the junction, i.e., within a few minority-carrier diffusion lengths. If a diffusion constant can be estimated, say by knowledge of the minority-carrier mobility, then the minority-carrier lifetime can be calculated. However, SI GaAs does not form good junctions, so such methods are really not applicable. 

Chapter 1 focuses on the characteristics of deep states in wide band-gap III-V compound semiconductors, particularly the recombination properties which control minority-carrier lifetime and luminescence efficiency. These properties are significant for many optoelectronic devices, including lasers, LEDs, and solar cells. While this review emphasizes areas of extensive recent development, it also provides references to previous comprehensive reviews. The compilation of levels reported in GaAs and GaP since 1974 is an important contribution, as is the discussion of the methods used to characterize these levels. 

Moreover, we shall keep in mind that the incorporation of dopants creates additional states for electrons and holes within the energy gap (often called impurity states). As a consequence, it unavoidably allows transitions to and from these states. This introduces additional recombination processes, which reduce the minority carrier lifetimes compared with lifetimes in the undoped material. 

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