Passivation and depassivation of silicon dangling bonds at the Si/SiO ₂ interface by atomic hydrogen

Atomic hydrogen is found to simultaneously passivate and depassivate silicon dangling bonds at the Si(111)/SiO2 interface at room temperature via the reactions Pb+H0→PbH and PbH+H0→Pb+H2. The passivation reaction occurs more efficiently keeping the steady-state P b density at a low value of only 3-6×1011 cm -2 during atomic hydrogen exposure. This low Pb density can only account for a small fraction of the total number of interface states produced by atomic hydrogen.