DIFFUSION

Jobin Mathew
Master of Nanoelectronic Engineering
What is Diffusion?
Diffusion is the net movement of a substance (e.g.,
an atom, ion or molecule) from a region of high
concentration to a region of low concentration. This
is also referred to as the movement of a substance
down a concentration gradient.[1]
Where is diffusion used?
Introduce impurities such as boron ,phosphorus ,antimony etc into silicon to control the
majority type and resistivity of layers formed in wafer(Doping) .
Today, diffusion is used in the formation of deep layers exceeding few tenths of
micron in depth.
How is it done?
Deposition of shallow high concentration layer of impurity through windows
etched in protective barrier layer.
Predeposition : doping often proceeds by an initial predep step to introduce the
required dose of dopant into the substrate.
Drive-In : a subsequent drive-in anneal then redistributes the dopant giving the
required junction depth and surface concentration.
How it happens ?
At high temperature impurity moves down (900 -1200) via substitutional or
interstitial diffusion
Diffusion Flux
Used to quantify how fast diffusion occurs. The flux is defined as either the number of
atoms diffusing through unit area per unit time (atoms/m2-second) or the mass of atoms
diffusing through unit area per unit time, (kg/m2-second).
For example, for the mass flux we can write
Diffusion Flux
J = M / At (1/A) (dM/dt) (Kg m-2 s-1)
where M is the mass of atoms diffusing through the
area A during time t.
Steady State diffusion
Ficks First Law-
Proportionality constant is the diffusivity D in cm
2
sec
-1
. D is related to atomic
hops over an energy barrier (formation and migration of mobile species) and is
exponentially activated. D is isotropic in the silicon lattice.
Negative sign indicates that the flow is down the concentration gradient.
Non steady state Diffusion
In many real situations the concentration profile and the concentration gradient are
changing with time. The changes of the concentration profile can be described in this
case by a differential equation, Ficks second law.
Thermally activated process
To jump from lattice site to lattice site, atoms need energy to break bonds with
neighbors, and to cause the necessary lattice distortions during jump. The energy
necessary for motion, Em, is called the activation energy for vacancy motion.
The average thermal energy of an atom (kBT = 0.026 eV
for room temperature) is usually much smaller that the
activation energy Em (~ 1 eV/atom)
Arrhenius
The probability of such fluctuation or frequency of jumps, Rj, depends exponentially on
temperature and can be described by equation that is attributed to Swedish chemist[2] .
R0 is the attempt frequency proportional to atomic vibrations
From this relation the diffusion coefficient can be estimated as
Where E
A
is the activation energy of the neutral vacancy and Do is the measure of the
frequency with which an atom attempts to make a jump over the barrier (10
13
-
10
14
Hz).
Advantages
Many wafers can be done simultaneously.
if there already are dopants in the silicon crystal, they can diffuse out in later
processes due to high process temperatures.
Comparatively inexpensive than ion implantation.
Limitations
Limited to solid solubility(Upper limit of an impurity that can be absorbed by
silicon).
Low surface concentration hard to achieve.
dopants in the crystal are spreading not only in perpendicular orientation but also
laterally, so that the doped area is enlarged in a unwanted manner
Silicon Nanophotonics
Study and application of photonic systems which use silicon as optical medium.
Used to replace the electrical interconnects with optical interconnects.
Because of Loss,delay ,power consumption.
Requirements
on chip Laser source is required
have to be fabricated with standard CMOS foundry
CMOS compatible
New developments
In 2013, a startup company named "Compass-EOS", based in California and in
Israel, was the first to present a commercial silicon-to-photonics router
Researchers at Sandia, Kotura, NTT, Fujitsu and various academic institutes have
been attempting to prove this functionality. A prototype 80 km, 12.5 Gbit/s
transmission has recently been reported using microring silicon devices.
Enhanced magnetic data storage with a capacity of one Tb/inch
2
Diagnosis , Therapy and drug delivery[3] [4]
Limitations of Silicon
Cannot be realized as a laser because it has indirect band gap structure.
Si need smaller bandgap material for integration with it.
Dopant enhanced diffusion in Ge[5][6]
highly n-type doped ,tensile strained (Shrink bandgap) Ge , permissible candidate
for si photonics.
n-type doping increase gain of Ge [7]
ion implantation not used because of irrecoverable lattice damage and increase in
optical loss.
P doping can be as high as 10
21
compared to the possible limit of 10
19
when using
ion implantation.
Diffusion model taking loss into consideration of the out diffusion of phosphorous
is more efficient than ion implantation method.
Enhanced doping of Ge by a factor of 100 .
References
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion
[2] Compoud semiconductor integrated circuits p 334
[3] . W. Chen, R. BardhW. Chen, R. Bardhan, M. Bartels, C. Perez-Torres, R.G.
Pautler, N.J. Halas, A. Joshi, Mol. CancerTher.,9, 1028 (2010)
[4] Nanoelectronics Photonics report
[5] Dopant enhanced diffusion for high n-typed doped Ge
[6]High phosphorous doped germanium: Dopant diffusionand modeling
[7]X. C. Sun, J. F. Liu, L. C. Kimerling, and J. Michel, IEEE J. Sel. Top.
Quantum Electron. 16, 124131 (2010)
Terms
out diffusion -The undesired diffusion of dopant atoms from a material with a
higher doping level to that with a lower doping level, when sufficient heat is
applied. This may occur, for instance, during the formation of epitaxial layers if
the temperature is not properly maintained.
in situ -dopant atoms are introduced into the semiconductor during its growth;
most commonly during epitaxial growth of semiconductor layers.
Epitaxy-Epitaxy means the growth of a single crystal film on top of a crystalline
substrate.