Original paper(Vol.49 No.6 pp.672)

Proposal of Prediction Method for Dislocation Generation in Silicon Substrates for Semiconductor Divices |Dependence of Strength for Dislocation Generation on Device Structure-

Hiroyuki Ohta and Makoto Kitano

Abstract: During fabrication of semiconductor devices, the stresses in a silicon substrate sometimes generate dislocations at high temperatures. As most of the dislocations are generated at the stress singularity fields in the silicon substrate, dislocation generation should be discussed with stress singularity problems. In this paper, prediction method for dislocation generation was proposed, and the strength of dislocation generation was measured and described using stress singularity parameters, K and . In the experiment, the specimens were silicon substrates with stressed SiN thin-film bands, at whose edges the stress singularity fields were formed. Parameter K was varied by changing the bandwidth, and was controlled by changing the shape of the band's edge. The strength was determined by the critical sizes of the bands for the generation. Dislocation-free process of ULSI can be designed to apply the prediction method.

Key Words:Dislocation, Silicon, Silicon nitride, Glide plane, Stress singularity parameters