High-temperature thermal evolution of SiAs precipitates in silicon

The thermal evolution of monoclinic SiAs precipitates at 1050° C in silicon samples implanted with 1 and 1.5×10¹⁷ As/cm² was followed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and secondary neutral mass spectrometry (SNMS). These experiments show, for the first time, the coexistence of two different states of As in silicon, i.e., the electrically active and the inactive mobile dopant, in equilibrium with monoclinic SiAs precipitates. Moreover, they provide, for the saturation concentration of As in silicon, which includes both these states, a value of 3×10²¹ cm^–3 at 1050° C.     

Metastability of Si1-yCy epilayers under 2 MeV alpha-particle irradiation

In this work we present some recent results concerning the alpha-particles irradiation of Si1-yCy alloy epitaxially grown on silicon. The study of the damage process is interesting because of the extensive use of backscattering technique as a tool of characterisation of this kind of materials and because of the possibility of adding information about the transformations that this metastable material undergoes. We point out that the irradiation damage process causes a change in the material structure different from that due to the thermal treatments. The irradiation damage occurs at a rate much higher than in Si, however it involves only a silicon atom fraction that appears to be proportional to the substitutional carbon content.     

TEM/CBED determination of strain in silicon-based submicrometric electronic devices

The convergent beam electron diffraction technique (CBED) of the transmission electron microscopy (TEM) has been employed to determine the strain distribution along a cutline parallel to the padoxide/Si interface in a 0.80 micron wide recessed-LOCOS structure. The values of the components of the strain tensor so obtained have been compared with those computed by two simulator codes. It has been found that both the LOCOS morphology and the strain distribution deduced from TEM images and TEM/CBED patterns, respectively, were in agreement with the simulation results, if some oxidation-related parameters were modified.