PASSIVATION OF IMPURITIES IN SEMICONDUCTORS BY HYDROGEN AND LIGHT-METAL IONS

Books as well as numerous articles have been written about hydrogen pa ssivation in classical semiconductors such as Si and GaAs. The subject has gained a renewed interest recently since hydrogen is widely consi dered to saturate the hole conductivity of the wide bandgap semiconduc tors GaN and ZnSe which are currently most promising for blue light em itting devices. Other group-I impurities are capable of compensating t he electrical conductivity of semiconductors both through directly neu tralising (passivating) the impurity or providing space charge of pola rity opposite to that of the dominating one. The paper reviews the sim ilarities and differences between hydrogen and its light metallic neig hbour in the periodic table, lithium. Also we provide a comparison wit h the heavier interstitial copper which is known for its ability to pa ssivate shallow accepters. Finally fundamental differences between sha llow-level and deep level passivation will be addressed.