H-induced platelet and crack formation in hydrogenated epitaxial Si∕Si0.98B0.02∕Si structures

Abstract

An approach to transfer a high-quality Si layer for the fabrication of silicon-on-insulator wafers has been proposed based on the investigation of platelet and crack formation in hydrogenated epitaxial Si∕Si0.98B0.02∕Si structures grown by molecular-beam epitaxy. H-related defect formation during hydrogenation was found to be very sensitive to the thickness of the buried Si0.98B0.02 layer. For hydrogenated Si containing a 130nm thick Si0.98B0.02 layer, no platelets or cracking were observed in the B-doped region. Upon reducing the thickness of the buried Si0.98B0.02 layer to 3nm, localized continuous cracking was observed along the interface between the Si and the B-doped layers. In the latter case, the strains at the interface are believed to facilitate the (100)-oriented platelet formation and (100)-oriented crack propagation.