Investigation of the Conductivity of Polycrystalline Silicon under Joule Heating

Abstract

In the present paper, we report results of a study of the influence of geometric factors and interfacial states on the transport processes of charge carriers in thin Si films on dielectric under Joule heating. The TCAD Sentaurus program package was used to perform, on the basis of obtained experimental data, calculation of the relative change in the resistance of mesa resistors of different widths as dependent on the power per unit area being released in the resistors. Analysis of the data obtained shows that the main contribution to conductivity was made by traps with shallow states at the silicon - silicon dioxide interface and at poly-Si grain boundaries. It is shown that the presence of these states leads to a non-monotonic dependence of the relative change in resistance on the heating power. Additional allowance for the charge carriers released from traps upon heating makes it possible to adequately describe the observed experimental dependences.