Optical Measurement of Compensation in Highly Doped Silicon

The radiative recombination spectrum of silicon which is highly doped with 7 × 10 18 cm −3 Sb atoms is analysed between 4.2 and 110 °K. From these measurements, it can be deduced that the silicon is compensated, and it is also possible to determine the nature of the compensating impurity. It is shown that the compensating impurity concentration can be obtained from the Shockley‐Read theory which allows a calculation to be made of the ratio of the hole and electron capture probabilities for such a recombination centre.