On the impact of stress on intrinsic defect formation during single crystal silicon growth

The incorporation of intrinsic point defects during silicon crystal growth from the melt is discussed using most recent data for intrinsic point defect thermal equilibrium concentration and diffusivity. It is shown that by taking into account the impact of stress on the thermal equilibrium concentration of vacancies and self-interstitials, the intrinsic point defect properties derived from self- and metal-diffusion experiments can be used to model point defect incorporation and clustering during silicon crystal growth from the melt. The solution is however not unique and a large uncertainty still remains on the real thermodynamic parameters of both intrinsic point defects. Only comparison with a wide range of experimental data from crystal pulling experiments—taking into account also the stress effects—will allow to further narrow down the uncertainty ranges on the intrinsic point defect properties in silicon.