Oxygen-related micro-defects in Czochralski silicon annealed at enhanced stress conditions

Abstract

Effect of enhanced (up to 1.2 GPa) hydrostatic argon pressure on creation of oxygen-related micro-defects (such as oxygen clusters, OC’s, and precipitates, OP’s) in Cz–Si during high temperature–high pressure treatment, HT–HP, at up to 1400 K, was investigated by chemical selective etching, FTIR, and photoluminescence, PL, methods. Cz–Si contained interstitial oxygen, O_i, with a concentration, c₀, up to 1.1×10¹⁸ cm³; prior to the HT–HP treatment some samples were pre-annealed at (720, 830) K–10⁵ Pa to create nucleation centres for O_i precipitation. The HT–HP treatment results in decrease of c₀, revealing defect-related PL bands and enhanced (in comparison to effect of annealing at 10⁵ Pa) creation of oxygen-related micro-defects.