Ab initio pseudopotential calculations of dopant diffusion in Si

Abstract

The ab initio pseudopotential method is used to study transient enhanced diffusion (TED) related processes. The electronic degrees of freedom are included explicitly, together with the fully self-consistent treatment of the electron charge density. A large supercell and a fine k-point mesh are used to ensure numerical convergence. Such method has been demonstrated to give quantitative description of defect energetics. We will show that boron diffusion is significantly enhanced in the presence of the Si interstitial due to the substantial lowering of the migrational barrier through a kick-out mechanism. The resulting mobile boron can also be trapped by another substitutional boron, forming an immobile and electrically inactive two-boron pair. Similarly, carbon diffusion is also enhanced significantly due to the pairing with Si interstitials. However, carbon binds to Si interstitials much more strongly than boron does, taking away most Si interstitials from boron at sufficiently large carbon concentration, which causes the suppression of the boron TED. We will also show that Fermi level effect plays an important role in both Si interstitial and boron diffusion.