Experimental and theoretical study of heterogeneous iron precipitation in silicon

Abstract

Heterogeneous iron precipitation in silicon was studied experimentally by measuring the gettering efficiency of oxide precipitate density of 1×1010cm−3. The wafers were contaminated with varying iron concentrations, and the gettering efficiency was studied using isothermal annealing in the temperature range from 300to780°C. It was found that iron precipitation obeys the so-called s-curve behavior: if iron precipitation occurs, nearly all iron is gettered. For example, after 30min annealing at 700°C, the highest initial iron concentration of 8×1013cm−3 drops to 3×1012cm−3, where as two lower initial iron concentrations of 5×1012 and 2×1013cm−3 remain nearly constant. This means that the level of supersaturation plays a significant role in the final gettering efficiency, and a rather high level of supersaturation is required before iron precipitation occurs at all. In addition, a model is presented for the growth and dissolution of iron precipitates at oxygen-related defects in silicon during thermal processing. The heterogeneous nucleation of iron is taken into account by special growth and dissolution rates, which are inserted into the Fokker-Planck equation. Comparison of simulated results to experimental ones proves that this model can be used to estimate internal gettering efficiency of iron under a variety of processing conditions.