Out-diffusion and precipitation of copper in silicon: An electrostatic model

C Flink; H Feick; SA McHugo; W Seifert; H Hieslmair; T Heiser; AA Istratov; ER Weber

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.85.4900

Out-diffusion and precipitation of copper in silicon: An electrostatic model

Phys Rev Lett. 2000 Dec 4;85(23):4900-3. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.85.4900.

Authors

C Flink¹, H Feick, SA McHugo, W Seifert, H Hieslmair, T Heiser, AA Istratov, ER Weber

Affiliation

¹ Department of Materials Science, University of California at Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.

PMID: 11102146
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.85.4900

Abstract

Concentrations of mobile interstitial copper and precipitated copper in silicon were studied after a high temperature intentional contamination and quench to room temperature. It was found that below a critical contamination the copper predominantly diffuses out to the surface, while for higher initial copper concentrations it mainly precipitates in the bulk. The critical copper contamination equals the acceptor concentration plus 10(16) cm (-3). This behavior can be explained by the electrostatic interaction between the positively charged interstitial copper and the forming copper precipitates.