The Influence of Phosphorus Dopant on the Structural and Mechanical Properties of Silicon

Abstract

Phosphorus (P) is widely used as n-type dopant for silicon (Si) to form the emitter layer in wafer-based silicon solar cells. The main purpose of this work is to investigate the influence of P doping on the structural and mechanical properties of silicon. CASTEP program, which uses the density functional theory (DFT), with a plane-wave basis, is used to study the structural, electronic, and mechanical properties of undoped and P-doped Si (Si1−xPx for 0.0001≤x≤0.05). The density of states (DOS), band structure, elastic constants, bulk modulus $$ \left(B \right) $$, Young’s modulus (E), Shear modulus $$ \left(G \right) $$, and Poisson’s ratio (v) were all calculated. It is found that brittleness of Si increased by P doping.