Redistribution of deep selenium and sulfur impurities in silicon upon surface doping with phosphorus

Abstract

The study is concerned with the effect of short-term high-temperature heating on Si:Se and Si:S samples, whose surface layers are doped with phosphorus to high concentrations. It is found that the resistivity of the wafers substantially increases deep in the bulk within up to ∼10 μm. The experimental data suggest that this effect is due to enhanced diffusion of chalcogen in the presence of the phosphorus-doped surface region. The mechanism of the effect is the injection of nonequilibrium interstitial silicon atoms from the layer heavily doped with phosphorus to the bulk of the sample. This results in a shift of the equilibrium between the concentrations of substitutional and interstitial impurity atoms towards higher concentrations of interstitials and, as a consequence, towards the increase in the relative content of the fast-diffusing interstitial component of the impurity.