Determination of Interstitial Atomic Oxygen and Substitutional Atomic Carbon in Silicon Wafers and Hydrogen in Silicon Nitride Films on Silicon Wafers by FTIR

Introduction

Worldwide silicon wafer production is steadily increasing due to increasing demand not only for semiconductors that has continued for decades, but for solar cells as well, where demand has been expanding since 2000. In both applications, however, control of the various types of impurities that can occur is required for ensuring the quality of silicon wafers. Quantitative analysis of interstitial oxygen and substitutional carbon in silicon wafers is known to be relatively easy using infrared spectroscopy. Furthermore, infrared spectroscopy can also be used for the determination of hydrogen in silicon nitride films that are deposited on the surface of silicon wafers as anti-reflective and insulating coatings. Here, we introduce examples of this type of measurement on such samples using the IRsolution Macro Program.

September 19, 2012 GMT