Evidence for the recombination-enhanced dissociation of a hydrogen-carbon complex in silicon

We have recently found that hydrogen injected into n-type crystalline silicon by chemical etching not only passivated phosphorus but also electrically activated substitutional carbon by forming a hydrogen-carbon complex with a donor level at Ec−0.15 eV. This article shows that the complex was annihilated by above-gap excitation near and below room temperature only outside the depletion layer of the Schottky structure under the application of various reverse bias voltages. This clearly proves that the hydrogen-carbon complex is dissociated via the recombination-enhanced defect reaction.