Anomalous temperature effect of oxidation stacking faults in silicon

Abstract

We observed an anomalous temperature effect in the growth of oxidation stacking faults in silicon. For a given oxidation time, the size of stacking faults first increases with temperature following an Arrhenius relation, reaches a peak at some temperature, and then decreases with temperature rather sharply until, finally, the faults totally vanish. The temperature above which the oxidation stacking faults vanish is dependent on the crystal surface orientation as well as on the oxidation ambients. In dry oxygen, this temperature is ∼1240 °C for {100} surfaces, ∼1220 °C for {111} surfaces, and ∼1175 °C for {1,0,11} surfaces (5° off {100}). Thus, the size-versus-temperature curve of the growth of oxidation stacking faults can be divided into two regions, which may be called the growth and the retrogrowth regions. In the growth region the growth follows a power law of (size) ∝ (time)0.8; in the retrogrowth region, the power law breaks down. The activation energy in the growth region is 2.3 eV for all surface orientations and oxidation ambients. A more complete picture of the growth of stacking faults emerges, in which the reported ’’immunity to stacking faults’’ of certain vicinal {100} surfaces is merely a point far out in the retrogrowth region.