Oxygen diffusivity in silicon derived from dynamical X-ray diffraction

Abstract

Thickness dependent Pendellösung oscillations are highly sensitive to strain fields from defects in a host crystal. Based on this, we present a novel technique to measure the precipitation kinetics of oxygen in silicon already at its early stage of clustering at high temperatures. At 900 °C, precipitates with a radius smaller than 4 nm and with a density of 1 ± 0.5 × 1013 1/cm3 were observed. The technique was calibrated by complementary scanning transmission electron microscope and energy dispersive X-ray measurements in the range of normal diffusivity yielding a diffusion constant of 1.7 ± 0.1×10−12cm2/s, which is close to the literature value of 2.074×10−12cm2/s. The measurements have been made with the characteristic Kα1-line of a high voltage tungsten X-ray tube at 59.31 keV, which provides the opportunity to illuminate through complex sample environments like high temperature scattering furnaces.