INVESTIGATION OF HYDROGEN IN SEMICONDUCTORS BY NUCLEAR TECHNIQUES

The interaction of hydrogen with shallow and deep level impurities in crystalline semiconductors results in a passivation of their electrical activity by the formation of complexes. Nuclear techniques, like the perturbed gamma-gamma-angular correlation (PAC) and the channeling of charged particles, have contributed to the understanding of the behaviour and microscopic structure of these complexes. A brief introduction to these techniques will be given. The results on the behaviour of hydrogen, in both elemental and compound semi-conductors, will be reviewed. For the case of Si, the information obtained on the formation, geometry and stability of acceptor-hydrogen complexes will be discussed more extensively.