Abstract
Preexisting oxidation stacking faults in silicon are expected to shrink when annealed in inert ambients. We have found that they sometimes exhibited a strange behavior of first shrinking and then expanding, though eventually shrinking again until disappearance. This phenomenon was not observed in silicon substrates with bare surfaces, or in oxygen-free substrates. It was traced to the combined effect of oxygen precipitation and the action of certain surface coverings, silicon nitride films in particular. In a model to explain this phenomenon, the precipitation of bulk oxygen would generate excess silicon self-interstitials which, when allowed to build up to some supersaturation, would feed the growth of the stacking faults. A bare surface would readily assimilate the excess self-interstitials by means of surface regrowth, thus suppressing a supersaturation. Information concerning the supersaturation of self-interstitials and the kinetics of surface regrowth, previously unavailable, has been obtained from this work.
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