Dislocation dynamics and slip band formation in silicon: In-situ study by X-ray diffraction imaging

X‐Ray Topography—More than Nice Pictures

“…For a standard (001) oriented Si wafer a 220 reflection is the best choice to achieve high contrast and resolution. The industrial sized wafer metrology was established for Si 300 mm, in about 2 h time, and upgraded to 450 mm Si in about 4.3 h. [75,76,77] In naked dislocation free Si wafers, it is enough to image the edges in a couple of minutes. This is of interest to localize microcracks, which originate from edge grinding or wafer handling and which are invisible by other characterization methods.…”

“…This sample was specifically prepared in this way to originate dislocation patterns for the 3D diffraction laminography as presented in Section 4. [61,62] Thanks to the in situ experiments a model for thermal slip formation is proposed by Wittge et al [101,102] Figure 6 shows schematically the situation of a (100) wafer with three indents and the perpendicular pairs of {111} glide planes below. Because of the strongest thermal and strain gradient parallel to [011], dislocation half-loops with the Burgers vector ⃗ b = a/2 ⟨110⟩ start as indicated into this direction.…”

“…From a number of experiments the velocity of dislocation glide was determined as a function of temperature and temperature gradient. [102] For a standard plateau annealing at about 1000°C the following glide velocity values can be given: i) 3.3(3) × 10 −5 ms −1 for the inclined segments of a half loop, i) 2.7 (3) × 10 −5 ms −1 for the horizontal segment of a half loop, and ii) 6.3(9) × 10 −5 ms −1 for individual inclined segments, which are not connected via horizontal segments any more. This is an acceleration of about a factor 2.…”

An insight into dislocation density reduction in multicrystalline silicon

“…White-beam X-ray topography (WB-XRT) is widely used for the characterization of both long-range and short-range strain in single crystals [66][67][68][69]. High-resolution X-ray topography (XRT) provided quantitative measurements of misfit dislocation line density [70], together with the monitoring of in situ and real-time nucleation, growth, and movement of dislocations in silicon at high temperatures [71]. In situ XRT using synchrotron radiation during mechanical testing [72] or crystal growth [73] helped to reveal the mechanism of dislocation formation.…”

3D Imaging of Dislocations

“…CDIC microscopy (in the reflection mode) is known to be well suited for the visualization of such height variations [5]. Based on Ref.…”