Parametric description of the effect of electron irradiation on recombination lifetime in silicon layers: An experimental approach

The aim of this paper is to perform an experimental investigation on the ef fects of electron beam irradiation on the recombination lifetime of both p- type and n-type silicon layers in order to provide a set of parameters usef ul to model the recombination effects in semiconductor computer simulation package, To this goal, we propose to use a proper three-terminal test struc ture in order to extract these parameters directly from lifetime measuremen ts along the silicon layers at different temperatures and at different inje ction levels by using the same silicon samples before and after the electro n irradiation process in order to highlight the effects of the irradiation itself on the lifetime, The experimental results indicate that the electron irradiation is more eff ective for controlling the high-injection lifetime in p-type silicon than i n an n-type one. The effect of the irradiation on lifetime can be basically taken into account by means of one energy level placed at 0.27 eV below th e conduction band edge for both n-type and p-type material, with sigma(p) c ongruent to 10 sigma(n).