strained silicon

By Martijn Feron, Zhen Zhang and Zhigang Suo

The mobility of charge carriers in silicon can be significantly increased when silicon is subject to a field of strain.In a microelectronic device, however, the strain field may be intensified at a sharp feature, such as an edge or a corner, injecting dislocations into silicon and ultimately failing the device. The strain field at an edge is singular, and is often a linear superposition of two modes of different exponents. We characterize the relative contribution of the two modes by a mode angle, and determine the critical slip systems as the amplitude of the load increases. We calculate the critical residual stress in a thin-film stripe bonded on a silicon substrate.

Stresses inevitably arise in a microelectronic device due to mismatch in coefficients of thermal expansion, mismatch in lattice constants, and growth of materials. Moreover, in the technology of strained silicon devices, stresses have been deliberately introduced to increase carrier mobility. A device usually contains sharp features like edges and corners, which may intensify stresses, inject dislocations into silicon, and fail the device. On the basis of singular stress fields near the sharp features, this letter describes a method to obtain conditions that avert dislocations.