The role of grown-in defects in advanced silicon technology

Grown-in defects are dominant in most substrate related defect generation processes in silicon. This is shown in detail for a thermally simulated CMOS process and for nucleation anneals of internal gettering procedures. The size distribution of grown-in oxide precipitate nuclei determines to a large extent if precipitation of oxygen is easy or difficult during standard precipitation tests and nucleation anneals. It also affects the number of bulk defects which are generated during CMOS processing. Here the first thermal step is of key influence for defect generation during processing.