Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. 27, 123-127 (2004)
https://doi.org/10.1051/epjap:2004146

Dislocation luminescence in plastically deformed silicon crystals: effect of dislocation intersection and oxygen decoration

¹ INFM and Department of Materials Science, University of Milano-Bicocca, Via Cozzi, 53 Milano, Italy
² Lab. TECSEN UMR6122, Univ. Aix-Marseille III, 13397 Marseille Cedex 20, France

Corresponding author: simona.binetti@unimib.it

Received: 4 July 2003
Accepted: 15 December 2003
Published online: 15 July 2004

Abstract

This paper is addressed to the discussion of the effect of the dislocation structure and the impurity contamination on the photoluminescence of Czochralski (Cz) silicon in the range of the D1 emission at 0.8 eV. Two types of dislocation systems were considered. One consists of intersecting hexagonal half loops of screw and 60° segments. The other one consists of a set of non-intersecting, parallel 60° dislocations. In both cases the plastic deformation processes were carried out at 670 °C, taking care to avoid unwanted impurity contamination. It is shown that the PL emission of pure 60° dislocations in the D1 region is missing the 0.807 eV component and consists of a narrow band at 0.817 eV superimposed onto a broad background centered at 0.830 eV. It is also shown that a system of intersecting half loops presents both the 0.807 eV and the 0.817 eV components. The effect of thermal annealing at 800 °C was shown to induce oxygen precipitation effects, revealed by supplementary spectral features. It is eventually demonstrated that the set up of the D1 band is not necessarily connected with the contamination of 60° dislocations with metallic impurities. The major role of oxygen on the dislocation luminescence is eventually experimentally confirmed.