Semiconductors dislocations

The ease with which dislocations move, and the distortions they induce throughout the crystal, make them very important defects for mediating the mechanical response of solids. Dislocations are also important in terms of the electronic properties of solids. In semiconductors, dislocations induce states in the gap which act like traps for electrons or holes. When the dislocation line lies in a direction that produces a short circuit, its effect can be disastrous to the operation of the device. Of the many important effects of dislocations we will only discuss briefly their mobility and its relation to mechanical behavior, such as brittle or ductile response to external loading. For more involved treatments we refer the reader to the specialized books mentioned at the end of the chapter. 

Analysis of stress distributions in epitaxial layers In-situ characterization of dislocation motion in semiconductors Depth-resolved studies of defects in ion-implanted samples and of interface states in heterojunctions. 

N. Miyazaki, S. Okuyama. Development of finite element computer program for dislocation density analysis of bulk semiconductor single crystals during Czochralski growth. J Cryst Growth 183 S, 1998. 

Crystal dislocations were invented (circa. 1930) by Orowan, Prandtl, and Taylor to explain why pure metal crystals are soft compared with homogeneous shear strengths calculated from atomic theory. They do this very well. However, roughly 15 years later (circa 1945) it was found that pure semiconductor crystals (e.g., Ge and Si) have hardnesses at room temperature comparable with calculated homogeneous shear strengths. Furthermore, it was known... 

It was discovered by Al shits et al. (1987) that static magnetic fields of order 0.5T affect the motion of dislocations in NaCl crystals. This is not an intrinsic effect but is associated with impurities and/or radiation induced localized defects. Also, magnetic field effects have been observed in semiconductor crystals such as Si (Ossipyan et al., 2004). 

Since there is no good physical framework in which the measured hardness versus temperature data can be discussed, descriptions of it are mostly empirical in the opinion of the present author. Partial exceptions are the elemental semiconductors (Sn, Ge, Si, SIC, and C). At temperatures above their Debye temperatures, they soften and the behavior can be described, in part, in terms of thermal activation. The reason is that the chemical bonding is atomically localized in these cases so that localized kinks form along dislocation lines. These kinks are quasi-particles and are affected by local atomic vibrations. 

Some of the major questions that semiconductor characterization techniques aim to address are the concentration and mobility of carriers and their level of compensation, the chemical nature and local structure of electrically-active dopants and their energy separations from the VB or CB, the existence of polytypes, the overall crystalline quality or perfection, the existence of stacking faults or dislocations, and the effects of annealing upon activation of electrically-active dopants. For semiconductor alloys, that are extensively used to tailor optoelectronic properties such as the wavelength of light emission, the question of whether the solid-solutions are ideal or exhibit preferential clustering of component atoms is important. The next... 

In Chapter 4, Corbett deals with specific defect centers in semiconductors. He points out that H aids the motion of dislocations in Si, which can lead to enbrittlement. Throughout this chapter, Corbett raises many questions that need further exploration. For example Is oxygen involved in processes that are attributed to hydrogen Does H play a role in defect formation ... 

Mahajan, Deformation Behavior of Compound Semiconductors J. P. Hirth, Injection of Dislocations into Strained Multilayer Structures D. Kendall, C. B. Fleddermann, and K. J. Malloy, Critical Technologies for the Micromachining of Silicon... 

The NEB method has been applied successfiilly to a wide range of problems, for example studies of diffusion processes at metal smfaces, multiple atom exchange processes observed in sputter deposition simulations, dissociative adsorption of a molecule on a smface, diffusion of rigid water molecules on an ice Di siuface, contact formation between metal tip and a smface, cross-slip of screw dislocations in a metal (a simulation requiring over 100,000 atoms in the system, and a total of over 2,000,000 atoms in the MEP calculation), g d diffusion processes at and near semiconductor smfaces (using a plane wave based Density Fimctional Theory method to calculate the atomic forces). In the last two applications the calculation was carried out on a cluster of workstations with the force on each image calculated on a separate node. 

Whereas in good-conducting doped or polymeric dyes ft-or -type conductivity can be explained without difficulty by analogy with inorganic semiconductors, the p- and -type photoconductivity in insulating (intrinsic) dye films cannot be explained in this manner. It is necessary to take into consideration the existence of defect states (lattice defects, dislocations, impurities etc.) distributed at different depths in the forbidden zone between valence and conduction band these defect states are able to trap electrons and holes, respectively, with different probability 10,11,88),... 

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