Passivation of Extended Defects in Silicon by Catalytically Dissociated Molecular Hydrogen

This paper reports the results of a new hydrogenation process, which applies the properties of noble metals as chemisorptive dissociation catalysts for molecular hydrogen. Used to passivate deep states in several kinds of polycrystalline materials, H has been shown to be particularly effective for samples grown by the EFG (Edge Film Grown) technique. These results are compared with former ones obtained on dislocated single crystals, which were passivated under an hydrogen plasma, to speculate about the role of dislocations on the yield of a hydrogen passivation process.