Empirical Process Model for Arsenic Diffusion in Si<sub>1-x-y</sub>Ge<sub>x</sub>C<sub>y</sub> Alloys

Abstract

The thermal diffusion behavior of ion-implanted Arsenic (As) in SiGeC alloy has been investigated and modeled. This paper introduces an empirical model consisting of physics-based and process-based parameters for evaluating the effective diffusivity of Arsenic in SiGeC accurately. The different process parameters that were found to affect the diffusivity were – Germanium content (x), diffusion temperature (T) and Carbon content (y). Germanium content taken into account was 7% and 12.3% for compressive strain in the structure with a Carbon content of 0.2%. The model incorporates all the effects associated with the change in the process parameters which affect the diffusivity of As in compressively strained-Si1-x-yGexCy. The model was found to be extremely accurate in predicting the exact dependencies of As diffusivity on physics-based and process parameters. The proposed empirical process model may find suitable application in the prediction of thermal diffusion behavior of As in Si1-x-yGexCy process-flow as well as in improving the existing model in Silvaco’s TCAD suite.