Oxygen diffusion in Si1-xGex alloys

The measurements of stress induced dichroism on the nu(3) mode of oxygen in Si1-xGex compounds and subsequent kinetics of the dichroism recovery upon isothermal annealing have been carried out. It was shown that the value of introduced by uniaxial stress dichroism decreases with increasing Ge content. Two components in the dichroism annealing kinetics were found. It was assumed that two components in diffusion relaxation correspond to the diffusion of oxygen being in a different nearest environment in lattice: the one component corresponds to oxygen surrounded by silicon atoms and the second one to the oxygen the neighbour of which is Ge atom. Diffusivity for each of the components was determined. It has been shown that the diffusivity of oxygen decreases with increasing Ge content for both configurations. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.