Influence of oxygen on trap-limited diffusion of hydrogen in proton-irradiated n-type silicon for power devices

The growing demand for power devices has led to the use of magnetic field-applied Czochralski (m:Cz) wafers owing to the limited production capacity and available diameters of the traditionally used floating zone (FZ) wafers. Consequently, the influence of oxygen impurities in the wafers on the electrical properties of devices, regardless of the growth method, needs to be investigated to achieve a stable fabrication process for power devices. Using the proton irradiation doping process and spreading resistance profiling technique, we evaluated the effective diffusion coefficient (Deff) related to trap-limited diffusion of hydrogen and the effects of impurities on diffusivity. We irradiated n-type silicon wafers, which have different carbon, oxygen, and phosphorus concentrations, with 2 MeV protons and annealed them at 300–400 °C. By analyzing the width of the n-type region, where hydrogen-related shallow donors (HDs) are induced, we estimated Deff to be five to six orders of magnitude lower than the intrinsic diffusion coefficient, indicating that hydrogen motion is highly trap-limited. Deff was significantly dependent on the oxygen concentration, and the activation energy of hydrogen diffusion varied from 0.57 ± 0.15 eV (pure epitaxial wafer) to 2.19 ± 0.15 eV (m:Cz wafer). This trend suggests that oxygen-related defects preferentially trap the mobile hydrogen released from thermally dissociated HDs. This study also reveals that the diffusion coefficients of different materials when annealed at 400 °C are comparable. This information is essential to realize the cost-effective production of power devices because we can treat m:Cz and FZ wafers equivalently during the doping process.