Observations of copper-related defects in gigascale integrated circuit silicon

with Blake Rowe, Shu-Han Lin and P. Fraundorf.

Here is a copper decorated stacking fault, of a sort often associated with Cu indiffusion followed by rapid cooling...

By comparison, here are some light microscope images of Cu-decorated voids...

Next, find TEM images of two types of copper-decorated cross in silicon. The larger image is that of a traditional butterfly defect. The inset cross, apparently associated with a square (001)-habit oxygen precipitate platelet, has not been reported in literature that we've seen.

Lastly, here's a darkfield image of what appears to be a Cu-decorated octahedral void (lit up), responsible for nucleating a much larger and more traditional "Copper butterfly". The tiny white dots along the butterfly arms are individual copper precipitates from the colonies which happen to be diffracting into the darkfield aperture.


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