An Examination of the Crystalline Quality of 200mm Diameter Silicon Substrates using X-ray Topography

The continued decrease in critical dimensions and increasing integration levels in Si CMOS technology is imposing ever tighter constraints on quality control parameters for the IC manufacturing industry. One very important issue is the need to ensure a uniform, high quality Si substrate, i.e. minimise defect/dislocation densities and eliminate strain distributions in the starting wafer material. A comprehensive Synchrotron X-Ray Topography (SXRT) study was applied to commercially supplied 200mm diameter Si wafers. These wafers, which all included a surface Si epilayer growth were supplied from manufacturers from around the globe. The study revealed not only differences in the overall quality of the wafers, but also differences in the quality of the individual Silicon epilayers and substrates. In all wafers the substrate quality varied dramatically with position across the wafer, as measured by the distribution of oxygen precipitates and stacking faults in the wafer. This distribution also varied significantly from manufacturer to manufacturer. The strain fields induced by the growth of lightly doped Si epilayers were also observed to qualitatively vary with location on a wafer, together with (as expected) thickness of the epilayers. The results clearly indicate that optimal quality control for such commercial wafers has not yet been achieved