Iron contamination in silicon wafers measured with the pulsed MOS capacitor generation lifetime technique

Abstract

The pulsed MOS capacitor generation lifetime technique is used to determine the iron density in boron-doped silicon wafers. Effective generation lifetimes (/spl tau//sub g,eff/) are extracted from the Zerbst plots obtained from the measured capacitance-time (C-t) data. Upon thermal heating at 200/spl deg/C for 5 minutes and quenching to 23/spl deg/C, iron-boron (Fe-B) pairs dissociate into interstitial iron (Fe/sub i/) and substitutional boron (B). The post-heated /spl tau//sub g,eff/ decreases immediately after heating. As time elapses (pairing time t/sub p/ increases) after Fe-B dissociation, T/sub g,eff/ increases because Fe/sub i/ reforms into Fe-B pairs. It takes about four times the time constant (i.e., t/sub p//spl ap/4/spl tau/) of Fe-B pairing reaction before the post-heated /spl tau//sub g,eff/ recovers to the pre-heated /spl tau//sub g,eff/. An expression is developed to determine the iron density. The iron density obtained from this expression shows good agreement with that measured by deep-level transient spectroscopy.