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Selenium Segregation in Femtosecond-Laser Hyperdoped Silicon Revealed by Electron Tomography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 April 2013

Georg Haberfehlner ,
Matthew J. Smith ,
Juan-Carlos Idrobo ,
Geoffroy Auvert ,
Meng-Ju Sher ,
Mark T. Winkler ,
Eric Mazur ,
Narciso Gambacorti ,
Silvija Gradečak  and
Pierre Bleuet
Georg Haberfehlner*
Affiliation:
CEA, LETI, MINATEC Campus, 17 rue des Martyrs, 38054 Grenoble Cedex 9, France
Matthew J. Smith
Affiliation:
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
Juan-Carlos Idrobo
Affiliation:
Materials Science and Technology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA
Geoffroy Auvert
Affiliation:
STMicroelectronics, 850 Rue Jean Monnet, 38926 Crolles, France
Meng-Ju Sher
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Mark T. Winkler
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Eric Mazur
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Narciso Gambacorti
Affiliation:
CEA, LETI, MINATEC Campus, 17 rue des Martyrs, 38054 Grenoble Cedex 9, France
Silvija Gradečak
Affiliation:
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
Pierre Bleuet
Affiliation:
CEA, LETI, MINATEC Campus, 17 rue des Martyrs, 38054 Grenoble Cedex 9, France
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: georg.haberfehlner@cea.fr
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Abstract

Doping of silicon with chalcogens (S, Se, Te) by femtosecond laser irradiation to concentrations well above the solubility limit leads to near-unity optical absorptance in the visible and infrared (IR) range and is a promising route toward silicon-based IR optoelectronics. However, open questions remain about the nature of the IR absorptance and in particular about the impact of the dopant distribution and possible role of dopant diffusion. Here we use electron tomography using a high-angle annular dark-field (HAADF) detector in a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) to extract information about the three-dimensional distribution of selenium dopants in silicon and correlate these findings with the optical properties of selenium-doped silicon. We quantify the tomography results to extract information about the size distribution and density of selenium precipitates. Our results show correlation between nanoscale distribution of dopants and the observed sub-band gap optical absorptance and demonstrate the feasibility of HAADF-STEM tomography for the investigation of dopant distribution in highly-doped semiconductors.

Keywords

electron tomographyHAADF-STEMfemtosecond pulsed laser irradiationoptical hyperdopingdopant segregation
Type
Materials Applications
Information
Microscopy and Microanalysis , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , June 2013 , pp. 716 - 725
Copyright
Copyright © Microscopy Society of America 2013 

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