Investigation of Facetted Growth in Heavily Doped Silicon Crystals Grown in Mirror Furnaces

Abstract

Herein, facets and related phenomena are studied for silicon crystals grown in the <100> and <111> directions, using the Zone Melting and Floating Zone techniques. Investigating the central facets of dislocation-free <111> crystals as a baseline allowed for the determination of the local temperature gradients. When comparing these results to dislocated <111> crystals, the presence of dislocations caused a clear reduction in the facet size, correlated with a reduction in the required local supercooling to estimated maximum values of around 0.6 K. Furthermore, for crystals grown on the rough {100} interface, attempts to provoke a morphological instability of the local phase boundary succeeded for crystallization velocities in the range of 10–16 mm/min, in good agreement with theory. Contrary to this observation, crystals grown in the <111> direction remained morphologically stable even at higher crystallization velocities due to the stabilizing effect of the atomically smooth interface. Additionally, crystals grown in the <111> direction with an oxygen skin by the Zone Melting technique reproducibly showed a non-periodic fluctuation of the central facet diameter at a certain translation velocity.