Investigation of Tl‐Doped Silicon by Low‐Temperature Photoluminescence during Light‐Induced Degradation Treatments

Scientific progress is made in understanding photoluminescence (PL) lines in thallium‐doped silicon. Two PL lines called A and P, which appear after quenching, are found to exhibit irreversible as well as reversible behavior under the application of light‐induced degradation (LID) treatments. The reversible behavior is similar to changes of a P line in indium‐doped silicon due to LID treatments, which have led to the identification of this P line to be caused by an In Si ‐Si i ‐defect. By exploiting the metastability of defects from the A Si ‐Si i category, the experimental findings of this study indicate that the underlying defect for the A and P line in thallium‐doped silicon is the Tl Si ‐Si i ‐defect.