Abstract
The formation of a denuded zone (DZ) by conventional furnace annealing (CFA) and rapid thermal annealing (RTA) based denudation processing is investigated and the gettering of copper (Cu) atoms in germanium co-doped heavily phosphorus-doped Czochralski (GHPCZ) silicon wafers is evaluated. It is suggested that both a good quality defect-free DZ with a suitable width in the sub-surface area and a high density bulk micro-defect (BMD) region could be formed in heavily phosphorus-doped Czochralski (HPCZ) silicon and GHPCZ silicon wafers. This is ascribed to the formation of phosphorus-vacancy (P-V) related complexes and germanium-vacancy (GeV) related complexes. Compared with HPCZ silicon, the DZ width is wider in the GHPCZ silicon sample with CFA-based denudation processing but narrower in the one with two-step RTA pretreatments. These phenomena are ascribed to the enhancing effect of germanium on oxygen out-diffusion movement and oxygen precipitate nucleation, respectively. Furthermore, fairly clean DZs near the surface remain in both the HPCZ and GHPCZ silicon wafers after Cu in-diffusion, except for the HPCZ silicon wafer which underwent denudation processing with a CFA pretreatment, suggesting that germanium doping could improve the gettering of Cu contamination.