Excitation rate dependence of Auger recombination in silicon

Abstract

This work reports on measurements of the Auger recombination coefficients in silicon wafers with pump-probe thermoreflectance techniques operating at two different excitation rates: 250 kHz (low repetition rate) and 80 MHz (high repetition rate). The different excitation frequencies give rise to different thermoreflectance signals in the Si samples, which is ascribed to the excited number density in the conduction band. In the low repetition rate case, the excited carriers recombine via Auger processes before the next pump excitation is absorbed. However, in the high repetition rate case, the rate in which the pump excitations are absorbed at the sample surface is higher than the Auger recombination rate, indicating that the excited carrier densities in the high repetition rate experiments are much higher than in the low repetition rate measurements even though the pump fluences are comparable. This is ascribed to pulse accumulation in the high repetition rate measurements, and is quantified with rate equation and thermoreflectance models fit to the experimental data. Comparing the data taken at the two different excitation modulations gives insight into the excited carrier density when recombination rate are on the same order as excitation frequencies.