Diffusion limited precipitation of oxygen in dislocation-free silicon

Abstract

The kinetics of oxygen precipitation in silicon have been determined from measurements of the IR 9-μm absorption band (4.2 K) and we obtain the time constant τ0 for the exponential approach to equilibrium for several temperatures. The density N of precipitate particles was measured directly by chemical etching, and inferred from IR scattering and cold neutron scattering. We use our values of τ0 and N to calculate the diffusion coefficient of oxygen in bulk silicon. This is the first time that this procedure has been used, and we obtain D=0.02 exp(−2.42 eV/kT) cm2 s−1 in the temperature range 650–1050 °C.