Data for Sub-2 cm/s passivation of silicon surfaces by aprotic solutions

Proton donors, such as hydrofluoric acid and superacids, are well known to provide highly effective short-term surface passivation. We demonstrate here that aprotic solutions based on bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)methane (TFSM) in hexane or pentane can also result in excellent passivation of (100)-orientation silicon surfaces.

We show that the optimized TFSM-pentane passivation scheme can measure effective lifetimes up to 20 ms, with a surface recombination velocity of 1.7 cm s^-1 at an excess carrier density of 10^15 cm^-3. Fitting injection-dependent lifetime curves requires chemical passivation and field effect passivation from a negatively charged layer with a charge density of 10^10 –10^11 q cm^-2. The slightly higher recombination velocity of 2.3 cm s^-1 measured with TFSM-hexane can be explained by a lower charge density in the passivating layer, suggesting that the steric hindrance associated with the solvent size could play a role in the passivation mechanism.