Comprehensive understanding on phosphorus precipitation in heavily phosphorus-doped Czochralski silicon

Abstract

Heavily phosphorus-doped Czochralski (HP-CZ) silicon is an important substrate material for manufacturing power electronic devices. The high concentration of phosphorus impurities may be supersaturated during the crystal growth of HP-CZ silicon or device manufacturing. Thus, understanding phosphorus precipitation in HP-CZ silicon is of technological significance. Herein, a panoramic view of phosphorus precipitation in HP-CZ silicon is presented in terms of crystallography, thermodynamics, and kinetics. It is found that the orthorhombic SiP precipitates can form during the crystal growth of HP-CZ silicon and also during the post-anneals of HP-CZ silicon at 450–1050 °C. Along with increasing annealing temperature, the formed SiP precipitates tend to adopt the platelet, polyhedron, and sphere-like shapes. Moreover, the excess point defects, i.e., silicon self-interstitials and vacancies, are found to affect phosphorus precipitation occurring in the low and high temperature regimes in different ways. In light of the kinetics of phosphorus precipitation at different temperatures, it is deduced that phosphorus precipitation follows a growth law in compliant with Ham's theory to a large extent. As an important output of this work, the temperature-dependent phosphorus solubilities in the dislocation-free silicon, which have been hardly acquired previously, are derived on the basis of investigating phosphorus precipitation in a set of HP-CZ silicon wafers with different phosphorus concentrations. Moreover, the derived solvus line for the phosphorus impurities in silicon could be a beneficial supplement to the existing phase diagram of the Si–P binary system in the extremely silicon-rich corner.