Monte Carlo studies of band-tail effects on the recombination kinetics in heavily doped silicon

Abstract

The effects of energy-band-tail states on the recombination kinetics in heavily doped silicon have been studied by means of a Monte Carlo simulation. Three fundamental kinetic processes can be distinguished: (1) Auger recombination limited decay; (2) deep-tail-states emission limited decay; and (3) emission-and-recombination bimolecular decay. The effects of the injection level of minority carriers are investigated. Higher injection corresponds to less importance of the tail states. The relative importance of Shockley–Read–Hall recombination through the tail states is determined by the capture cross section for majority carriers and also by the lattice temperature. Results presented here will help to clarify recombination mechanisms and to extract the Auger coefficients and the band-tail density from transient decay measurement.