Nickel: A very fast diffuser in silicon

Nickel is increasingly used in both IC and photovoltaic device fabrication, yet it has the potential to create highly recombination-active precipitates in silicon. For nearly three decades, the accepted nickel diffusivity in silicon has been DNi(T)=2.3×10−3exp(−0.47 eV/kBT) cm2/s, a surprisingly low...

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Veröffentlicht in:Journal of applied physics 2013-05, Vol.113 (20)
Hauptverfasser: Lindroos, J., Fenning, D. P., Backlund, D. J., Verlage, E., Gorgulla, A., Estreicher, S. K., Savin, H., Buonassisi, T.
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:Nickel is increasingly used in both IC and photovoltaic device fabrication, yet it has the potential to create highly recombination-active precipitates in silicon. For nearly three decades, the accepted nickel diffusivity in silicon has been DNi(T)=2.3×10−3exp(−0.47 eV/kBT) cm2/s, a surprisingly low value given reports of rapid nickel diffusion in industrial applications. In this paper, we employ modern experimental methods to measure the higher nickel diffusivity DNi(T)=(1.69±0.74)×10−4exp(−0.15±0.04 eV/kBT) cm2/s. The measured activation energy is close to that predicted by first-principles theory using the nudged-elastic-band method. Our measured diffusivity of nickel is higher than previously published values at temperatures below 1150 °C, and orders of magnitude higher when extrapolated to room temperature.
ISSN:0021-8979
1089-7550
1089-7550
DOI:10.1063/1.4807799