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

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, c(0), up to 1.1 X 10(18) cm(3); prior to the HT-HP treatment some samples were pre-annealed at (720, 830) K-10(5) Pa to create nucleation centres for O-i precipitation. The HT-HP treatment results in decrease of c(0), revealing defect-related PL bands and enhanced (in comparison to effect of annealing at 10(5) Pa) creation of oxygen-related micro-defects. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.