Investigation of short time donor annihilation in silicon

Abstract

We have investigated the annealing of the oxygen donor in silicon in the temperature range 550–700 °C using Heatpulse lamp annealing in the time range of 1–1200 s. As-grown silicon wafers can contain donors due to cooling through 450 °C as a part of the crystal growth process. A 1-s anneal at 650 °C is sufficient to eliminate these donors completely. Intentionally created donors were annealed in order to determine reaction kinetics. A second-order process involving the donor plus another species fits the data, with an Arrhenius behavior as a function of temperature. The activation energy for this process is 1.7 eV.