Temperature Dependance of Photocurrent Decay Times in Very High Resistivity, Zn-Compensated n-Type Silicon
The photocurrent decay in high resistivity, n-type zinc-compensated silicon photoconductors has been measured in the temperature range 230–300 °K. The bulk portion of the decay can be resolved into two strongly temperature-dependent exponential components. A bulk recombination model based on two defect levels was used to analyze the experimental data. Reasonably good agreement between experiment and theory could be obtained only if the two centers were assumed to be the photoconductivity sensitizing, double acceptor Zn−3/2, and the V−3/2 level due to the vacancy which is also a double acceptor. In contrast, the measurements could only be partly explained with models in which the V−3/2 level was replaced by the E center, the lower zinc level Zn−1/2, or the A center. Moreover, unreasonable values for some of the material constants had to be assumed with these latter models.