Abstract
A nondestructive technique is presented for the determination of trace levels of interstitial iron contamination in ultrapure silicon. This approach is based on the well-known ability of iron to undergo a reversible pairing reaction with boron near room temperature. A variety of float-zoned silicon samples with low concentrations of boron (∼1011 cm−3) were subjected to thermal annealing treatments to study changes in the apparent boron concentration as determined by the standard method of comparing the photoluminescence intensity of the boron bound exciton to that of the free exciton. Changes in the apparent boron concentration were attributed to the formation or dissociation of iron–boron pairs, allowing us to estimate the interstitial iron concentration in these samples. Remarkably, relatively mild thermal treatments can change the apparent boron concentration in some of these samples by up to a factor of ten.
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