Nature of the metastable boron–oxygen complex formation in crystalline silicon

Abstract

Transient capacitance measurements reveal new physics of metastable defect formation in boron-doped oxygen-containing crystalline silicon solar cells. These measurements demonstrate that holes are deeply trapped during defect formation and removed during thermal annealing with activation energy of 1.3 eV. Previous theoretical models {Du et al., [Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 256602 (2006)] and Adey et al., [Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 055504 (2004)]} are supported by present findings that defect formation is a slow two-stage process with activation energies of 0.17 eV and 0.4 eV at high and low temperature, respectively. Repulsive hole capture by a positive oxygen-dimer determines the defect formation rate at low temperature {Du et al., [Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 256602 (2006)]}. The high temperature process is governed by a structural conversion of the dimer {Du et al., [Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 256602 (2006)] and Adey et al., [Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 055504 (2004)]}. An abnormally low rate prefactor allows this low-enthalpy reaction to be observed at the higher temperature. This dimer conversion presents an excellent example of an “entropy barrier” that explains the low conversion rate. Disparate formation and annealing results published here and in other publications are related by the Meyer–Neldel rule with an isokinetic temperature of 410 K.