Liu, AnYaoSun, ChangMacdonald, Daniel2015-10-272015-10-270021-8979http://hdl.handle.net/1885/16130Effective hydrogenation of interstitial iron in boron-doped multicrystalline silicon wafers is reported. The multicrystalline silicon wafers were annealed with plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposited silicon nitride films, at temperatures of 400 °C – 900 °C and for times from minutes to hours. At low temperatures where a combined effect of hydrogenation and precipitation of dissolved Fe is expected, results show that the hydrogenation process dominates the effect of precipitation. The concentrations of dissolved interstitial iron reduce by more than 90% after a 30-min anneal at temperatures between 600 and 900 °C. The most effective reduction occurs at 700 °C, where 99% of the initial dissolved iron is hydrogenated after 30 min. The results show that the observed reductions in interstitial Fe concentrations are not caused by the internal gettering of Fe at structural defects or by an enhanced diffusivity of Fe due to the presence of hydrogen. The hydrogenation process is conjectured to be the pairing of positively charged iron with negatively charged hydrogen, forming less recombination active Fe-H complexes in silicon.This work was supported by the Australian Research Council and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/issn/0021-8979..."Publishers version/PDF may be used on author's personal website, institutional website or institutional repository" from SHERPA/RoMEO site (as at 28/10/15). Copyright 2014 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in Journal of Applied Physics and may be found at https://doi.org/10.1063/1.49018312014-09-2110.1063/1.49018312015-12-11