Effects of annealing on electrical properties of Si/Si junctions by surface-activated bonding

Effects of annealing on surface-activated bonding (SAB)-based Si/Si junctions were investigated by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) observations and current–voltage ( I – V ) measurements. We observed an amorphous-like layer at the bonding interface, which was recrystallized by annealing. We extracted the potential barrier heights at Si/Si interfaces annealed at different temperatures from the results of I – V measurements at various ambient temperatures. For p-Si/p-Si junctions, the barrier height increased as the annealing temperature increased from 200 to 400 °C and decreased from 400 to 1000 °C. For n-Si/n-Si junctions, the barrier height increased as the annealing temperature increased from 200 to 600 °C and decreased from 600 to 1000 °C. By using the charge neutral level (CNL) model, we estimated the energy of CNL, E CNL , and the density of interface states, D it , at each annealing temperature. D it decreased as the annealing temperature increased from 400 to 1000 °C. E CNL showed values larger than the reported ones.