Early Stages Of Oxygen Precipitation In Silicon

It was fOlllld as long ago as 1954 that heating oxygen rich silicon to around 450°C produced electrical active defects - the so called thermal donors. The inference was that the donors were created by some defect produced by the aggregation of oxygen. Since then, there has been an enor mous amount of work carried out to elucidate the detailed mechanism by which they, and other defects, are generated. This task has been made all the more relevant as silicon is one of the most important technological ma terials in everyday use and oxygen is its most common impurity. However, even after forty years, the details of the processes by which the donors and other defects are generated are still obscure. The difficulty of the problem is made more apparent when it is realised that there is only one oxygen atom in about ten thousand silicon atoms and so it is difficult to devise experiments to 'see' what happens during the early stages of oxygen precipitation when complexes of two, three or four 0xygen atoms are formed. However, new important new findings have emerged from experiments such as the careful monitoring of the changes in the infra red lattice absorption spectra over long durations, the observation of the growth of new bands which are correlated with electronic infra-red data, and high resolution ENDOR studies. In addition, progress has been made in the improved control of samples containing oxygen, carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen.

A unique and well-organized reference, this book provides illuminating data, distinctive insight and expert guidance on silicon properties.

Containing over 200 papers, this volume contains the proceedings of two symposia in the E-MRS series. Part I presents a state of the art review of the topic - Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen and Oxygen in Silicon and in Other Elemental Semiconductors. There was strong representation from the industrial laboratories, illustrating that the topic is highly relevant for the semiconductor industry. The second part of the volume deals with a topic which is undergoing a process of convergence with two concerns that are more particularly application oriented. Firstly, the advanced instrumentation which, through the use of atomic force and tunnel microscopies, high resolution electron microscopy and other high precision analysis instruments, now allows for direct access to atomic mechanisms. Secondly, the technological development which in all areas of applications, particularly in the field of microelectronics and microsystems, requires as a result of the miniaturisation race, a precise mastery of the microscopic mechanisms.

This book contains the first comprehensive review of intrinsic point defects, impurities and their complexes in silicon. Besides compiling the structures, energetic properties, identified electrical levels and spectroscopic signatures, and the diffusion behaviour from investigations, it gives a comprehensive introduction into the relevant fundamental concepts.

This book emphasizes the importance of the fascinating atomistic insights into the defects and the impurities as well as the dynamic behaviors in silicon materials, which have become more directly accessible over the past 20 years. Such progress has been made possible by newly developed experimental methods, first principle theories, and computer simulation techniques. The book is aimed at young researchers, scientists, and technicians in related industries. The main purposes are to provide readers with 1) the basic physics behind defects in silicon materials, 2) the atomistic modeling as well as the characterization techniques related to defects and impurities in silicon materials, and 3) an overview of the wide range of the research fields involved.

Silicon, as an electronic substrate, has sparked a technological revolution that has allowed the realization of very large scale integration (VLSI) of circuits on a chip. These 6 fingernail-sized chips currently carry more than 10 components, consume low power, cost a few dollars, and are capable of performing data processing, numerical computations, and signal conditioning tasks at gigabit-per-second rates. Silicon, as a mechanical substrate, promises to spark another technological revolution that will allow computer chips to come with the eyes, ears, and even hands needed for closed-loop control systems. The silicon VLSI process technology which has been perfected over three decades can now be extended towards the production of novel structures such as epitaxially grown optoelectronic GaAs devices, buried layers for three dimensional integration, micromechanical mechanisms, integrated photonic circuits, and artificial neural networks. This book begins by addressing the processing of electronic and optoelectronic devices produced by using lattice mismatched epitaxial GaAs films on Si. Two viable technologies are considered. In one, silicon is used as a passive substrate in order to take advantage of its favorable properties over bulk GaAs; in the other, GaAs and Si are combined on the same chip in order to develop IC configurations with improved performance and increased levels of integration. The relationships between device operation and substrate quality are discussed in light of potential electronic and optoelectronic applications.

Despite the vast knowledge accumulated on silicon, germanium, and their alloys, these materials still demand research, eminently in view of the improvement of knowledge on silicon-germanium alloys and the potentialities of silicon as a substrate for high-efficiency solar cells and for compound semiconductors and the ongoing development of nanodevic