Band structure modification in silicon hyperdoped with tellurium for optoelectronics

Hyperdoping silicon with chalcogen atoms is a topic of increasing interest due to the strong sub-band gap absorption exhibited by these materials, which can be exploited to develop infrared photodectectors and intermediate band solar cells [1-3]. In our work, tellurium-hyperdoped Si layers have been fabricated by ion implantation followed by either millisecond range flash lamp annealing (FLA) or nanosecond range pulsed-laser melting (PLM). The Rutherford backscattering spectrometry / Channeling (RBS/C) results reveal the high-quality recrystallization of tellurium implanted Si by both FLA and PLM. From the transport measurements, the conductivity increases with increasing tellurium concentration and the high tellurium concentration samples show a finite conductivity if temperature tends to zero. This indicates that the high concentration doping of tellurium induces an insulator-to-metal transition in silicon although tellurium introduces a deep donor in Si. Moreover, the ellipsometry measurements show that the band gap narrows with increasing doping concentration, which could enable silicon-based optoelectronics in the infrared spectral range.

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[2] Tabbal, M., et al., Appl. Phys. A 98, 589–594 (2010)
[3] Umezu, I., et al., J. Appl. Phys. 113, 213501 (2013)