Defect engineering for modern power devices

Abstract

Radiation‐induced defects are a common tool in the manufacturing of modern power semiconductor devices. Hydrogen‐related doping is a feasible method to introduce deep doping profiles with a low thermal budget. The hydrogen‐related donors (HDs) require radiation damage and hydrogen, which can be induced by different methods, e.g., proton implantation, helium and proton co‐implantation, or an implantation followed by a hydrogen‐plasma step. The choice of these methods significantly affects the introduction efficiency of the donors and the necessary post‐implantation thermal budget. By controlling the hydrogen‐to‐damage ratio, the manufacturing process of the HD profiles may be moved on a trade‐off between the activation efficiency and the necessary thermal budget. A low hydrogen‐to‐damage ratio leads to an increased activation of the HDs, whereas a high hydrogen‐to‐damage ratio reduces the necessary diffusion time of the hydrogen during the post‐implantation anneal. For the technical usage of hydrogen‐related doping, knowledge of an efficient process window is desirable. In this paper, we consider proton implantation, helium and proton co‐implantation, and a proton implantation followed by a hydrogen‐plasma step as different introduction methods of HD profiles with regard to the activation efficiency of the HDs and the necessary thermal budget.

Metastable Defects in Proton Implanted and Annealed Silicon

“…Due to the large penetration depth of the implanted protons ranging up to several hundred micrometers, this method requires low thermal budgets compared to a standard in-diffusion process. The use of proton implantation with doses ranging from several 10 13 cm -2 to several 10 14 cm -2 and subsequent annealing at temperatures ranging from 300 °C to 500 °C, nowadays finds application in forming deep n-conducting layers in crystalline silicon [4]. The correlated shallow-donor complexes are assumed to be higher order vacancy complexes decorated by hydrogen and comprise ionization energies less than 56 meV [5].…”

The Efficiency of Hydrogen-Doping as a Function of Implantation Temperature

“…The doping property of hydrogen in silicon was first reported in 1970 [1] and nowadays finds widespread application in the manufacturing of power semiconductor devices (see, e.g., Ref. [2]). To introduce the hydrogen-related donors (HDs) a vacancy-correlated precursor species is formed in a first step.…”

DLTS characterization of proton‐implanted silicon under varying annealing conditions

“…Proton implantations find wide‐spread application in the tailoring of modern power semiconductor devices . The comparatively high penetration range of protons allows a well‐controlled modification of the electrical properties of the semiconductor substrate in a spatial range spanning four orders of magnitude between a depth of about 100 nm and 1 mm.…”