CARRIER LIFETIMES IN HIGHLY INJECTED SILICON

The recombination lifetime under high-injection conditions in the base of n+/p-/p+ diode was investigated on the basis of the relation between electroluminescence and terminal current. For carrier plasma densities up to 1017 cm-3 the relation between the electroluminescence signal and the current through the device is linear and dominated by the heavily doped region recombination. This relation becomes sublinear for higher carrier density due to Auger recombination in the bulk of the p- base. The Auger recombination coefficient is extracted by fitting the experimental sublinearity with numerical solutions that express the electroluminescence signal as a function of the terminal current. In the 10 17-6×1017 cm-3 carrier plasma density, the Auger coefficient was found to be 1.77×10-30 (±10%) cm6 s-1 at room temperature.