Phosphorus diffusion in the presence of threading dislocations in strain relaxed SiGe films

We have studied phosphorus diffusion in strain relaxed Si1−xGex films (x=0.1 and 0.2) by secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). The relaxed films were grown with low-pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) on a Si substrate followed by a graded SiGe layer. Two sets of samples were prepared under different growth conditions, and by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) it was shown that these conditions resulted in one set of samples containing a high density of threading dislocations in the relaxed films, and one set with a low dislocation density. The SIMS profiles of the phosphorus distributions in the samples, after annealing in N2-ambient in the temperature range of 700–950 °C, show that the phosphorus diffusion is significantly faster in the films with the high dislocation density. Furthermore, the data suggests that the fast diffusion is due to a higher mobility of the diffusing complex rather than an increase in the point defect concentration mediating the diffusion, a result which indicates that the threading dislocations may act as channels for the rapid dopant diffusion in SiGe.