Impurity pairs and excitation relaxation in doped silicon

The kinetics of photoconductivity is studied in silicon doped with B, Al, Ga, In, P, As, and Sb with concentrations of 10₁₆–10₁₈cm₋₃ at 4.2 and 10.5 K placed in an 8-mm microwave electric field under pulsed impurity excitation. It is found that infrared absorption by impurity pairs and a slow component of photoresponse relaxation arise at close impurity concentrations. It is shown that this component is due to an increase in the polarization hopping conductivity in the presence of the optical charge exchange of impurity states—isolated impurities and impurity pairs and dipoles (pairs of the major and compensating impurities). The hopping transfer processes of ion charges in the course of relaxation are analyzed. It is shown that the main contribution to polarization photoconductivity comes from hopping transitions in impurity pairs at relatively small concentrations and from hopping with the participation of isolated ions at increased concentrations.