An investigation was made of the effect of the proximity of a surface upon the ripening behavior of dislocation loops in pre-amorphized material. Beginning with well-defined initial conditions, the depth of the loops was varied by successively removing surface layers. Changes in the size-distribution function during subsequent annealing were studied by means of transmission electron microscopy. The results showed that the number of Si atoms which were bound up in the loops was not conserved during annealing, and that the loop depth had a marked effect upon the ripening kinetics. Both of the observations demonstrated the non-conservative nature of the Ostwald ripening of dislocation loops near to wafer surfaces. Differing ripening kinetics were also observed for annealing in vacuum and in Ar. This suggested that different boundary conditions at the surface were established during annealing in the latter 2 environments.

Nonconservative Ostwald ripening of dislocation loops in silicon Y.L.Huang, M.Sieibt, B.Plikat: Applied Physics Letters, 1998, 73[20], 2956-8