Study of surface recombination on cleaved and passivated edges of Si detectors

The effectiveness of the passivation of a cleaved boundary of large area strip detectors has been studied by using Al2O3 formed by atomic layer deposition technology for p-Si structures and Si x N y grown on n-Si by plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition. The parameters of bulk and surface recombinations have been examined in a contactless mode implemented through analysis of the microwave-probed photoconductivity transients. Rather efficient and reproducible passivation, revealed through the reduction of surface recombination velocities from ~2 × 104 to 5 × 103 cm s−1 for n-Si and from ~2 × 104 to 3 × 102 cm s−1 for p-Si samples, has been obtained. The existence of trapping centres together with recombination defects has been revealed at the cleaved interface within the passivating layer. It has been revealed that the impact of surface recombination is negligible when bulk radiation defects are dominant in samples irradiated with fluences >1014 neq cm−2.