The Impact of the Substrate on the Electrical Performance of Silicon Junction Diodes

The impact of the silicon substrate properties on the electrical performance of p-n junction diodes is investigated. P-type substrates with different initial oxygen content and thermal preheat-treatment are compared with epitaxial and Float-Zone (FZ) Si. While the bulk and perimeter generation current increases for increasing density of oxygen-precipitation induced extended defects, no change is observed in the surface recombination velocity, indicating that the interface properties are hardly affected. At the same time, it is demonstrated that the low-frequency noise in forward operation is strongly related to the static current-voltage parameters, i.e., is strongly influenced by the starting material quality.