Morphology and growth process of thermally induced oxide precipitates in Czochralski silicon

Sueoka, Koji; Ikeda, Naoki; Yamamoto, Toshiro; Kobayashi, Sumio

doi:10.1063/1.354254

Cited by 86 publications

(77 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…15. It seems that with increasing temperature the thickness of the plate-like precipitates increases until they become octahedral as the ones we observed in the sample with growth anneal for 2 h at 1100…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 52%

Investigation of the Composition of the Si/SiO₂Interface in Oxide Precipitates and Oxide Layers on Silicon by STEM/EELS

Kissinger

Schubert

Kot

et al. 2017

ECS J. Solid State Sci. Technol.

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We investigated thermal oxide layers of different thickness on (100) and (111) silicon substrates by STEM/EELS to determine the stoichiometry profiles and compared these with stoichiometry profiles of plate-like and octahedral oxide precipitates in silicon. It was found that the stoichiometry of SiO x (x = 2) cannot be reached if the oxide layer thickness is lower than 10 nm for thermal oxides grown at 900 • C. This is due to an interface layer of equal maximum slope of x for all oxide layers. The slope of x is the change in stoichiometry with position and was obtained from fitting by sigmoid functions. Similar results were found for the oxide precipitates in silicon. However, there are arguments which question the slope determined via the low loss EEL spectra and the maximum x value could be closer to 2 in reality. On a sample with an oxide layer of 13.9 nm thickness we compared stoichiometry profiles obtained from the plasmon region and the Si-K 2,3 and O-K ionization edges. The width of the interface measured on stoichiometry profiles decreases with increasing energy loss and is lowest for the O-K ionization edge with a width of 1. In a previous work, we found that both the interface between an oxide precipitate and the surrounding silicon matrix and the interface between a silicon substrate and a thermal oxide layer are of the same nature.1 In both cases, between SiO 2 existing in the center of the precipitate and in the oxide layer and Si of the matrix and the substrate a suboxide region of 2-3 nm was found. These results were obtained by electron energy loss spectrometry (EELS) carried out by scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM). In the low loss region, it is possible to distinguish between Si, SiO, and SiO 2 which all exhibit different maxima of the plasmon loss energy. By deconvolution, the local composition of the phase can be determined with the help of reference spectra of the three components.The stoichiometry of the oxide precipitates (SiO x ) was debated for a long time and application of different methods on different samples containing oxygen precipitates resulted in different values for x ranging from 1 to 2. Recently, it was demonstrated by applying several direct and indirect methods that the oxide precipitates consist of SiO 2 .2 Inspired by the results in Ref. 1 and 2, a layer model was proposed explaining the different experimental values for x for oxide precipitates of different geometry.3 Especially, for plate-like precipitates with a small aspect ratio the lower x values could be explained assuming that they consist of SiO 2 surrounded by a 2 nm SiO shell. However, neither is it known until now if all oxide precipitates consist of SiO 2 in the center nor is it known how thick the suboxide region for oxide precipitates grown at different temperature and time is. It needs to be mentioned that the suboxide region is not a layer of SiO composition but a profile of x increasing from the silicon matrix to the SiO 2 core. The impression of a layer just stems from the analysis of ele...

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 52%

Investigation of the Composition of the Si/SiO₂Interface in Oxide Precipitates and Oxide Layers on Silicon by STEM/EELS

Kissinger

Schubert

Kot

et al. 2017

ECS J. Solid State Sci. Technol.

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“…As can be seen the oxygen precipitates are of platelet morphology, accompanied with stress field rather than secondary induced defects such as punched-out dislocations. It was reported that the platelet oxygen precipitates are generally formed by the moderate length of anneal in the temperature range of 700-1000 1C [18] and the lattice strain around the platelet oxygen precipitates could reach 0.4% [19]. The relationship between the thickness (d) and diagonal length (r) of the platelet oxygen precipitates can be described by the following equation [18]:…”

Section: Characterization Of Oxygen Precipitatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The sizes of oxygen precipitates herein are almost determined by the growth anneal at 1000 1C because the duration of nucleation anneal at 650-800 1C is quite short, which just leads to oxygen precipitate nuclei of small sizes. It has been reported that both thickness and diagonal length of platelet precipitates obey the t 1/2 law (t refers to annealing time), so the aspect ratio (b ¼d/r) depends on the annealing temperature rather than the annealing time [18,20].…”

Section: Characterization Of Oxygen Precipitatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Immobilization of dislocations by oxygen precipitates in Czochralski silicon: Feasibility of precipitation strengthening mechanism

Zeng¹,

Chen²,

Zeng³

et al. 2011

Journal of Crystal Growth

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“…Initially, the precipitates can be assumed to grow as thin plates of constant thickness according to the growth equation given by, where γ is a kinetic coefficient whose value is chosen to be 2 Â 10 À 8 cm which is the same as proposed in [24]. However, Sueoka et al [29] has shown that in very long isothermal annealing treatments at 800 1C, the growth of oxide precipitate plates can be described by the following equations for a thin oblate spheroid,…”

Section: Size Distribution Calculationmentioning

confidence: 98%

An effective nucleation rate for oxide precipitation in Czochralski silicon and a simple framework for multi-step anneal calculations

Samanta

2015

Journal of Crystal Growth

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Morphology and growth process of thermally induced oxide precipitates in Czochralski silicon

Cited by 86 publications

References 19 publications

Investigation of the Composition of the Si/SiO₂Interface in Oxide Precipitates and Oxide Layers on Silicon by STEM/EELS

Investigation of the Composition of the Si/SiO₂Interface in Oxide Precipitates and Oxide Layers on Silicon by STEM/EELS

Immobilization of dislocations by oxygen precipitates in Czochralski silicon: Feasibility of precipitation strengthening mechanism

An effective nucleation rate for oxide precipitation in Czochralski silicon and a simple framework for multi-step anneal calculations

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Morphology and growth process of thermally induced oxide precipitates in Czochralski silicon

Cited by 86 publications

References 19 publications

Investigation of the Composition of the Si/SiO2Interface in Oxide Precipitates and Oxide Layers on Silicon by STEM/EELS

Investigation of the Composition of the Si/SiO2Interface in Oxide Precipitates and Oxide Layers on Silicon by STEM/EELS

Immobilization of dislocations by oxygen precipitates in Czochralski silicon: Feasibility of precipitation strengthening mechanism

An effective nucleation rate for oxide precipitation in Czochralski silicon and a simple framework for multi-step anneal calculations

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Investigation of the Composition of the Si/SiO₂Interface in Oxide Precipitates and Oxide Layers on Silicon by STEM/EELS

Investigation of the Composition of the Si/SiO₂Interface in Oxide Precipitates and Oxide Layers on Silicon by STEM/EELS