Chemistry of Point Defect in Silicon and its Applications in Semiconductor Technology

Abstract

AbstractThe chemistry of the interactions between point defects and impurities is discussed by considering first the general thermodynamic and kinetic aspects of these reactions, deserving major attention to the identity of of the stable chemical species eventually formed and to the boundary conditions for diffusion controlled and reaction controlled interaction processes.The second part of the paper is instead dedicated to the analysis of the chemistry of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and point defects in silicon, which is a system of major technological interest.We postulate that at low enough temperatures, when homogeneous nucleation processes are slow, spinodal decomposition assists oxygen aggregation phenomena. We postulate, also, on the basis of the existing knowledge, that carbon and hydrogen favour alternative reaction paths for oxygen in the due of clustering processes and discuss the hydrogen-enhanced oxygen diffusivity in the frame of a conventional trapping model.