Crystalline silicon surface passivation by the negative-charge-dielectric Al2O3

In this contribution it will demonstrated that Al2O3 films synthesized by plasma-assisted atomic layer deposition are a very interesting low temperature solution for the passivation of highly and lowly doped p-type c-Si and lightly doped n-type c-Si. From experiments it will be shown that the excellent surface passivation by Al2O3 can for a large part be attributed to a high fixed negative charge density in the film on the film-substrate interface. The implications of this high fixed negative charge density on the surface passivation of both n- and p-type c-Si will be addressed.