Study of diffusion of impurities in semiconductor silicon by activation analysis and nuclear reaction methods

Diffusion of impurities is a basic operation in the technology of modern semiconductor devices especially integrated circuits. A knowledge of diffusion parameters such as concentration profile, diffusion depth and diffusion coefficient makes the optimization of a technological process possible. A destructive method of the step-by-step removal of the layers from the silicon single crystal slices irradiated in a nuclear reactor with subsequent determination of impurity contents was used in the diffusion studies of phosphorus, arsenic and gold. Phosphorus was determined by the beta counting of³²P after a separation, arsenic and gold were determined by means of a Ge(Li) gamma-ray spectroscopy without any chemical separation. The diffusion of boron was studied by the nondestructive method of the deconvolution of the energy spectrum of prompt alpha radiation from¹⁰B(n, α)⁷Li after thermal neutron irradiation.