Relating Platinum Diffusion to Minority Carrier Lifetime Control in PiN Diode: Coupled TCAD Process and Device Simulation

Introduction

Platinum and gold are widely used as an effective method to control lifetime in silicon-based devices [1, 2, 3]. Platinum and gold are introduced as recombination centers to improve switching performance. Thermal diffusion is primarily used as the common method to introduce platinum or gold dopants into silicon. There is interest to better understand how the processing conditions for Pt/Au diffusion can affect switching behavior. Control and shaping of the profile is critical to obtain optimum device performance. In this article, Silvaco Victory TCAD tools [4] [5] are used to predict the effect of platinum on a PiN diode’s reverse recovery time (Trr). The simulated platinum profile from process simulation is automatically fed into the device simulator, and the relationship between platinum diffusion processing parameters and Trr is effortlessly studied.