New impurity-defect reactions in silicon.

We report the isolation of a new major defect in n-type silicon following room temperature electron irradiation. Using deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS) combined with minority carrier injection at low temperature (~ 250 K), we show that the DLTS peak usually ascribe to the phosphorus-vacancy pair hides a signal arising from this new defect in its stable configuration. We find that the defect can exist in three other, metastable configurations which can be individually frozen in and studied by DLTS. The electronic properties of the four configurations, and the electronically controlled configurational transformations are described. The defect is tentatively identified to a phosphorus- carbon pair.