Multi Scale Modeling and Simulation for Oxygen Precipitate Behavior in Silicon Wafer

Abstract

Oxygen precipitates in semiconductor device are generally considered beneficial for its metallic contaminants gettering function, but the oxygen precipitates also affect to degrade the efficiency of solar cell. The formation of oxygen precipitates is closely related to the grown-in defects like oxygen in crystal growth process and heat treatment cycle in device process. Oxygen comes into the silicon melt by dissolving quartz (SiO2) crucible and incorporates into the silicon crystal in Czochralski process. The oxygen plays key role in the formation of oxygen precipitate nuclei in crystal growth process and then the nuclei grow up to be oxygen precipitates in device process. Therefore, the formation of oxygen precipitates is closely related to the crystal growing process and device manufacturing process. In this research, we interpreted the formation and behavior of oxygen precipitates depending on varying oxygen concentrations by using Multi_Scale method. The method is very useful to obtain more reliable interpretation result than other single methods. The validity of this research is verified by comparing with experimental data.