next up previous contents
Next: 3.1.5 High Concentration Effects Up: 3.1 Diffusion in Silicon Previous: 3.1.3 Intrinsic Dopant Diffusion

3.1.4 Extrinsic Dopant Diffusion

  For modern devices shallow, highly doped junctions are needed. Under extrinsic conditions ( tex2html_wrap_inline5129 ), the diffusivities of the dopants show some concentration dependence. The gradient of the ionized dopant causes an electric field, which operates as additional drift term for the diffusion flux. The modified dopant diffusion flux is given by (3.1-24),

  equation930

where tex2html_wrap_inline5131 is the charge state of the dopant, -1 for singly charged donors and +1 for singly charged acceptors, and tex2html_wrap_inline5137 denotes the electrostatic potential.

The electrostatic potential is determined by the Poisson equation (3.1-25), where n and p are the electron and hole concentrations, respectively.

  equation937

The quantity tex2html_wrap_inline5143 represents the total net concentration of dopants, which is defined for z ionized dopants by:

  equation944

Under special assumptions, like Boltzmann statistics and charge neutrality (3.1-27) it is not necessary to solve Poisson's equation numerically. In this case, the electron and hole concentration can be expressed analytically by (3.1-28) and (3.1-29), where tex2html_wrap_inline5147 is the built-in potential.

    eqnarray953

With (3.1-27) to (3.1-29) the built-in potential can then be calculated explicitly.

  equation964

Due to the fact that electric interactions between charged species are occurring on a much faster time scale than the chemical interactions, the above assumptions are valid under diffusion conditions. Examinations on applying the numerical solution (3.1-25) and the approximation of the Poisson equation (3.1-30) to diffusion profiles can be found in [Jün86].

When the build-in potential is substituted into (3.1-24), the influence of the electric field on the dopant diffusion is modeled consistently. If we think in terms of multiple dopant diffusion, the impact of the electric field is quite different. Whether the electric field is enhancing or retarding the diffusion flux depends on the local doping conditions. For an acceptor diffusing in a p-doped region, enhancement takes place, while there is retardation for the acceptor if the net-doping changes its sign at an adjacent p-n junction.

Besides the field effect at extrinsic doping conditions, we further have to modify the diffusivities for the dopants to account for concentration dependence and Fermi level dependence. As we expressed the multiply charged point defects in terms of the equilibrium concentrations (see 3.1-9), the intrinsic dopant diffusivity (3.1-23) needs to be extended, to account for multiple charges states of dopants and point-defects. Let us assume for the sake of completeness that point defects exists in either neutral, singly charged or doubly charged states. According to the given atomic diffusion mechanism, there are several combinations of charged dopant-defect pairs AX possible. Each charged pair r may also be related to different diffusivities tex2html_wrap_inline5153 . To calculate the effective dopant diffusivity tex2html_wrap_inline5155 , we have to sum up all particular diffusivities by (3.1-31), where tex2html_wrap_inline5157 denotes the intrinsic diffusivity tex2html_wrap_inline5111 of the dopant [Fai81].

  equation982

The temperature dependence of the diffusivities obeys an Arrhenius law tex2html_wrap_inline5161 . Diffusivities for the most common dopants under extrinsic conditions are shown in Table 3.1-1.

   table1000
Table 3.1-1: Arrhenius parameters for the diffusivities of B, As, P and Sb in silicon after [Fai81]

The vacant and occupied positions in Table 3.1-1 refer to the mechanism involved during diffusion. While the data for boron and arsenic are reliable, the diffusion behavior of phosphorus is much more complicated than Table 3.1-1 suggests. It depends on the doping level, whether phosphorus diffuses via interstitials or vacancies or both. Some authors also included pair-pair diffusion mechanisms to model experimental data for phosphorus diffusion obtained by [Yos79] more or less accurately [Dun92] [Gha95]. Till now these experimental data could not be reproduced satisfactory.


next up previous contents
Next: 3.1.5 High Concentration Effects Up: 3.1 Diffusion in Silicon Previous: 3.1.3 Intrinsic Dopant Diffusion

IUE WWW server
Fri Jul 5 17:07:46 MET DST 1996