Quantitative study of isoelectronic copper pairs by photoluminescence and deep level transient spectroscopy

Abstract

The correlation between the Cu induced deep level at E_v + 0.1 eV and the appearance of luminescent Cu pairs, leading to a characteristic line spectrum with the most intense Cu no phonon line at 1.014 ev, has been examined using deep level transient spectroscopy and photoluminescence. Samples of floating zone (FZ) grown p-Si with concentrations of the 0.1 eV Cu centre varying from 10¹¹ to about 10¹⁴ cm^-3 were obtained by a Cu contamination treatment without quenching. The concentration of the luminescent Cu pairs was estimated by analysing the dependence of the Cu line intensity on the excitation power in the transition region to saturation. The saturation intensities, which are proportional to the concentration of luminescent Cu centres, show a linear dependence on the 0.1 eV deep centres with good correlation, suggesting that the same Cu induced centre is detected by deep level transient spectroscopy and photoluminescence.