TY - CHAP A1 - Herold, Steven A1 - Acker, Jörg ED - Scheschkewitz, David ED - Kickelbick, Guido T1 - Measurement of the temperature dependence of lattice deformations in silicon using Raman microscopy T2 - 9th European Silicon Days, 9-12 September 2018, Saarbrücken, Germany, Book of abstracts N2 - One of the most common methods to analyse silicon materials is Raman-spectroscopy.[1] More recently there is a focus in the analysis of lattice deformations during sample preparations.[2] These deformations not only increase the chance of crack formation but also increases the chemical reactivity of the silicon towards etch processes or oxidation processes.[3] In this contribution, we will present our latest Raman evaluation technique for silicon lattice deformation and a way to control them using rapid thermal annealing. The transitions and relaxation of different lattice deformation states after the rapid heating to up to 900°C will be analysed in detail, while also the recrystallisation of amorphous silicon will be discussed from the aspects of lattice deformations. It will be shown that during the tempering the lattice deformation on scratched, indented or diamond wire sawn samples homogenises to a mainly weak tensile deformed state and that these homogenisation processes happen only up to certain critical temperatures. KW - silicon KW - lattice strain KW - Raman microscopy KW - phase transition Y1 - 2018 SP - S. 197 PB - Universität des Saarlandes CY - Saarbrücken ER - TY - GEN A1 - Herold, Steven A1 - Acker, Jörg T1 - Lattice strain enhanced acidic etching on as cut sawn silicon wafer T2 - Materials Science in Semiconductor Processing N2 - The mechanical processing of silicon wafers leads to a heterogeneous lateral strain distribution and various modifications of the silicon, both of which influence the resulting topography after acid etching. In this study we investigate the influence of local strains and the initial topography of slurry and diamond wire saw wafers on the acid etching mechanism. The strain distribution is quantified and qualified by Raman microscopy before and after thermal treatment, while the topography is characterized by confocal microscopy before and after etching. The thermal treatment was used to selectively relax strains and investigate the effect of the individual strains on the etching mechanism. We found that amorphous silicon and compressive strained silicon are mainly present on the top most surface of the saw damage and do not influence the chemical reactivity of acid etching. In contrast, highly reactive tensile strained silicon is found up to 2.7 μm deep in the saw damage and acts as an etching mask. Rapid etching of the tensile strained silicon by HF/HNO3/H2SiF6 leads to the formation of cracks with high local concentrations of intermediate species. These strains induced cracks are etched out together with the original saw damage induced cracks and trenches and form the final surface after etching. Furthermore, we can show how the tensile strain strength must have a relative Raman shift of at least −2 cm−1 to have an effect on the local etch rate. Our data demonstrate how mechanical treatment in combination with thermal treatment and acidic etching can be used to optimize the resulting topography for applications like photovoltaics. In addition, it provides a deeper insight into the acid etching mechanism for non-planar silicon wafers. KW - silicon KW - lattice strain KW - Raman microscopy KW - confocal microscopy KW - etching KW - reactivity Y1 - 2021 UR - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1369800120315080 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mssp.2020.105575 SN - 1873-4081 SN - 1369-8001 VL - 123 ER -