Simulation of Electrical Conductivity in poly-Si Films under Joule Heating Using TCAD Sentaurus

In the present paper, we report results of a study of the influence of interfacial states at inter-crystallite boundaries and bulk trap states on the electron transport in thin poly-Si films on insulator under Joule heating. Numerical simulation in the TCAD Sentaurus software was used to calculate the dependence of the relative change in the resistance of silicon mesa-resistors made from a silicon on insulator structure with different internal structure on the applied power density in the resistors (per unit area). An analysis of simulated data has shown that the main contribution to the electrical conductivity is due to the shallow traps at inter-crystallite boundaries. In addition, it was found that the presence of those states leads to a non-monotonic dependence of the relative change in resistance on the applied power. Making an additional allowance for the charge carriers released from traps upon heating makes it possible to adequately describe the experimentally observed dependences.