Hydrogen passivation of deep metal-related donor centers in germanium

Germanium samples diffused with Cr, Co, Cd, Te, S, Se, Zr, and Ti were exposed to a low pressure hydrogen plasma for 2 h at 250 °C. Deep level transient spectrocopy profiling revealed that the deep metal-related donor centers could be divided into three classes: those which were either weakly or strongly neutralized to the depth of the hydrogen incorporation and those which were unaffected by hydrogen plasma heat treatment.