Proposal of prediction method for dislocation generation in silicon substrate for semiconductor devices

In semiconductor devices, stress in silicon substrates sometimes generates dislocations during the fabricating process at high temperatures. Although most of the dislocations are generated at the stress singularity fields, dislocation generation has been discussed without considering stress singularity problems. This paper show's that dislocation generation can be predicted by using stress singularity parameters. In the experiment, the specimens were silicon substrates with stressed thin film bands, at whose edges the stress singularity fields were formed. The strength of the singularity was controlled in order to change the bandwidth. Whether or not dislocations at the film edges appeared was compared with the value of the singularity parameter. This comparison was performed for two structures of thin films and at three temperatures, and the resuits show that the singularity parameter can be used to predict the generation of dislocations.