Equilibrium dopant incorporation in CVD silicon epitaxy

In‐situ doping of epitaxial silicon layer with arsenic is controlled either by means of a mixed equilibrium – kinetical mechanism characterised by the influence of layer growth rate, or by means of a pure equilibrium‐related mechanism showing no layer growth rate effect. Layer growth rate can be selected to mark the transition from one mode to the other by introducing a characteristic rate v   epi * . Equilibrium controls dopant incorporation when v epi 〈 v   epi *〉 0 is ture. That critical rate depends on temperatur as well as on input partial pressure of arsine and can be expressed by the three different empirical quantities A, B , and E . The former two of them are defined by conventional dopant incorporation theory. The additional quantity E is a function of arsine input pressure. That function not only defines an upper limit E = E ∞ but also a lower limit E = 0 at which v   epi * = 0 is valid.