Thermodynamics of impurity elements in solid silicon

The determination of thermodynamic properties of impurity elements in solid silicon is important to control their incorporation or doping into silicon during materials processing. In this paper, we review the reported solid solubilities of impurities in silicon prior to the thermodynamic evaluation. These solid solubilities as well as the segregation ratios of impurities between solid and liquid silicon at its melting point were used in a thermodynamic analysis to evaluate the excess partial molar Gibbs energy of the impurities in solid silicon. The excess Gibbs energies were determined for 15 impurity elements and we discuss the effect of lattice strain which is caused by the substitutional impurity in silicon.