N-type doping in Si by shallow impurities, such as P, As and Sb, exhibits an intrinsic limit due to the Fermi-level pinning via defect complexes at high doping concentrations. Here we demonstrate that doping Si with the chalcogen Te by non-equilibrium processing, a deep double donor, can exceed this limit and yield higher electron concentrations. In contrast to shallow impurities, both the interstitial Te fraction decreases with increasing doping concentration and substitutional Te dimers become the dominant configuration as effective donors, leading to a non-saturating carrier concentration as well as to an insulator-to-metal transition. First-principle calculations reveal that the Te dimers possess the lowest formation energy and donate two electrons per dimer to the conduction band. These results provide novel insight into physics of deep impurities and lead to a possible solution for the ultra-high electron concentration needed in today's Si-based nanoelectronics. * Corresponding authors,
Presently, silicon photonics requires photodetectors that are sensitive in a broad infrared range, can operate at room temperature, and are suitable for integration with the existing Si technology process. Here, we demonstrate strong room-temperature sub-bandgap photoresponse of photodiodes based on Si hyperdoped with tellurium. The epitaxially recrystallized Te-hyperdoped Si layers are developed by ion implantation combined with pulsed laser melting and incorporate Te dopant concentrations several orders of magnitude above the solid solubility limit. With increasing Te concentration, the Te-hyperdoped layer changes from insulating to quasi-metallic behavior with a finite conductivity as the temperature tends to zero. The optical absorptance is found to increase monotonically with increasing Te concentration and extends well into the mid-infrared range. Temperaturedependent optoelectronic photoresponse unambiguously demonstrates that the extended infrared photoresponsivity from Te-hyperdoped Si p-n photodiodes is mediated by a Teintermediate band within the upper half of the Si bandgap. This work contributes to pave the way towards establishing a Si-based broadband infrared photonic system operating at room temperature.
Abstract:Ion implantation of Mn combined with pulsed laser melting is employed to obtain two representative compounds of dilute ferromagnetic semiconductors (DFSs):
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