First-principles studies of a photovoltaic material based on silicon heavily codoped with sulfur and nitrogen

摘要

In silicon co-hyperdoped with nitrogen and sulfur, dopant atoms tend to form dimers in the near-equilibrium process. The dimer that contains substitutional N and S atoms has the lowest formation energy and can form an impurity band that overlaps with the conduction band (CB). When separating the two atoms far apart from each other, the impurity band is clearly isolated from the CB and becomes an intermediate band (IB). The sub-band-gap absorption decreases with the decrease in the substitutional atom distance. The sub-band-gap absorption of the material is the combined effect of the configurations with different N-S distances. (C) 2018 The Japan Society of Applied Physics