E. Wolf et al., THE INFLUENCES OF CARBON, HYDROGEN AND NITROGEN ON THE FLOATING-ZONE GROWTH OF 4-INCH SILICON-CRYSTALS, Materials science & engineering. B, Solid-state materials for advanced technology, 36(1-3), 1996, pp. 209-212
Dislocation-free silicon crystals, grown without a crucible by the flo
ating zone (FZ) technique, were developed and are produced for manufac
turing high voltage and high power devices. These crystals grow under
extremely complicated thermal conditions, so that the advantage of hig
h purity may be offset by the origin of new structural defects, which
do not exist with the Czochralski method. With increasing crystal diam
eters microdefects may act as sources for dislocation formation. Attem
pts were made to suppress the microdefect formation by decreasing the
carbon concentration in the starting material. To suppress arcing betw
een the inductor electrodes and/or the inductor and the growing crysta
l, extinguishing gases such as hydrogen and nitrogen were added to the
argon ambient. While hydrogen gives rise to the origin of anomalous d
efects, nitrogen even has beneficial effects on the crystal quality.