Mechanisms of Current Transition in High Compensated Silicon Samples with Zinc Nanoclusters

This article presents experimental results on the study of the current-voltage characteristics of strongly compensated n- and p-type silicon samples diffusion-doped with zinc at a temperature of 80 K. The current-voltage characteristics of the studied samples contain both sublinear and superlinear sections. Several (up to eight) characteristic areas were found, the number of which depends on the degree of illumination, temperature, and electrical resistivity of the sample. Under certain conditions, there is an alternation of sections of the current-voltage characteristic with negative differential conductivity of the N- and S-type, behind which current instabilities with an infra-low frequency are observed. The appearance of sections of the current-voltage characteristic with a quadratic dependence is explained by the presence of fast and slow recombination centers associated with zinc nanoclusters, and sublinear sections are explained in terms of the theory of the "injection depletion effect". The formation of nanoclusters with the participation of zinc ions was confirmed by atomic force microscopy studies.