Analytical Modeling of the Interaction of Vacancies and Oxygen for Oxide Precipitation in RTA Treated Silicon Wafers

Abstract

We have investigated the impact of rapid thermal annealing (RTA) induced vacancy supersaturation on oxide precipitation based as much as possible on experimental and theoretical values. Oxygen precipitation after RTA processing was found to be controlled by the initial concentration of interstitial oxygen in a sixth power dependency and frozen vacancies just in a cubic dependency. The formation of tensile strained clusters seems to be the favored process for coherent nucleation of oxide precipitates. The reduction of interstitial oxygen can be accurately modeled for the temperature range from 1150 to using Ham's theory for precipitate growth and an empirical relation based on nucleation of oxide precipitates by agglomeration of complexes. During RTA treatments at temperatures vacancies seem to be consumed by other processes. Below RTA temperatures of , oxide precipitation is dominated by shrunken as-grown precipitate nuclei because as-grown nuclei can be dissolved only at RTA temperatures .