Surface passivation of heavily boron or phosphorus doped crystalline silicon utilizing amorphous silicon

Excellent surface passivation of heavily boron or phosphorus doped crystalline silicon is presented utilizing undoped hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H). For passivating boron doped crystalline silicon surfaces, amorphous silicon needs to be deposited at low temperatures 150 °C≤Tdep≤200 °C, leading to a high bandgap. In contrast, low bandgap amorphous silicon causes an inferior surface passivation of highly boron doped crystalline silicon. Boron doping in crystalline silicon leads to a shift of the Fermi energy towards the valence band maximum in the undoped a-Si:H. A simulation, implementing dangling bond defects according to the defect pool model, shows this shift in the undoped a-Si:H passivation to be more pronounced if the a-Si:H has a lower bandgap. Hence, the inferior passivation of boron doped surfaces with low bandgap amorphous silicon stems from a lower silicon-hydrogen bond energy due to this shift of the Fermi energy. Hydrogen effusion and ellipsometry measurements support our interpretation.