Critical precipitate size revisited and implications for oxygen precipitation in silicon

Abstract

A generalized expression is derived describing the impact of intrinsic point defects and strain on the critical size of spheroidal incoherent precipitates. An important phenomenon that has been neglected so far is the incorporation of intrinsic point defects of the host matrix in the precipitate itself. It is shown that this can have an important impact both on the critical precipitate size, on the amount of emitted intrinsic point defects, and on the precipitated phase itself. The theoretical results are illustrated for the case of oxygen precipitation in silicon.