Edge dislocation behaviour in Au–n-silicon diodes

Surface barrier diodes on previously deformed n-silicon slices of different resistivities have been produced to investigate the behaviour of dislocations and their effect on the diode characteristics. It is shown that the introduction of dislocations decreases the barrier capacitance; the generation current, on the other hand, is enhanced caused by a reduction of the carrier effective lifetime, which results proportional to a constant σ0 = 1.75 × 10−2 cm2 s−1, the density of edge type dislocations introduced by the deformation. It results also that the dislocations have the most effective energy level for the generation-recombination process at 0.52 eV above the top of the valence band.