A new technique is described for manufacturing silicon wafers with the highest capability yet reported for gettering transition metallic, oxygen, and hydrogen impurities in CMOS image sensor fabrication. It is demonstrated that this technique can implant wafers simultaneously with carbon and hydrogen elements that form the projection range by using hydrocarbon compounds. Furthermore, these wafers can getter oxygen impurities out-diffused from the silicon substrate to the carbon cluster ion projection range during heat treatment. Therefore, they can reduce the formation of transition metals and oxygen-related defects in the device active regions and improve electrical performance characteristics, such as dark current and image lag characteristics. The new technique enables the formation of high-gettering-capability sinks for transition metals, oxygen, and hydrogen impurities under device active regions of CMOS image sensors. The wafers formed by this technique have the potential to significantly reduce dark current in advanced CMOS image sensors.

A new technique is described for manufacturing advanced silicon wafers with the highest capability yet reported for gettering transition metallic, oxygen, and hydrogen impurities in CMOS image sensor fabrication processes. Carbon and hydrogen elements are localized in the projection range of the silicon wafer by implantation of ion clusters from a hydrocarbon molecular gas source. Furthermore, these wafers can getter oxygen impurities out‐diffused to device active regions from a Czochralski grown silicon wafer substrate to the carbon cluster ion projection range during heat treatment. Therefore, they can reduce the formation of transition metals and oxygen‐related defects in the device active regions and improve electrical performance characteristics, such as the dark current, white spot defects, pn‐junction leakage current, and image lag characteristics. The new technique enables the formation of high‐gettering‐capability sinks for transition metals, oxygen, and hydrogen impurities under device active regions of CMOS image sensors. The wafers formed by this technique have the potential to significantly improve electrical devices performance characteristics in advanced CMOS image sensors.

We investigated the diffusion behavior of hydrogen in a silicon wafer made by a carbon-cluster ion-implantation technique after heat treatment and silicon epitaxial growth. A hydrogen peak was observed after high-temperature heat treatment (>1000 °C) and silicon epitaxial growth by secondary ion mass spectrometry analysis. We also confirmed that the hydrogen peak concentration decreased after epitaxial growth upon additional heat treatment. Such a hydrogen diffusion behavior has not been reported. Thus, we derived the activation energy from the projected range of a carbon cluster, assuming only a dissociation reaction, and obtained an activation energy of 0.76 ± 0.04 eV. This value is extremely close to that for the diffusion of hydrogen molecules located at the tetrahedral interstitial site and hydrogen molecules dissociated from multivacancies. Therefore, we assume that the hydrogen in the carbon-cluster projected range diffuses in the molecular state, and hydrogen remaining in the projected range forms complexes of carbon, oxygen, and vacancies.

REGULAR PAPERS • OPEN ACCESSEffect of dose and size on defect engineering in carbon cluster implanted silicon wafers Carbon-cluster-ion-implanted defects were investigated by high-resolution cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy toward achieving high-performance CMOS image sensors. We revealed that implantation damage formation in the silicon wafer bulk significantly differs between carbon-cluster and monomer ions after implantation. After epitaxial growth, small and large defects were observed in the implanted region of carbon clusters. The electron diffraction pattern of both small and large defects exhibits that from bulk crystalline silicon in the implanted region. On the one hand, we assumed that the silicon carbide structure was not formed in the implanted region, and small defects formed because of the complex of carbon and interstitial silicon. On the other hand, large defects were hypothesized to originate from the recrystallization of the amorphous layer formed by high-dose carbon-cluster implantation. These defects are considered to contribute to the powerful gettering capability required for high-performance CMOS image sensors.

We developed silicon epitaxial wafers with high gettering capability by using hydrocarbon–molecular–ion implantation. These wafers also have the effect of hydrogen passivation on process-induced defects and a barrier to out-diffusion of oxygen of the Czochralski silicon (CZ) substrate bulk during Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) device fabrication processes. We evaluated the electrical device performance of CMOS image sensor fabricated on this type of wafer by using dark current spectroscopy. We found fewer white spot defects compared with those of intrinsic gettering (IG) silicon wafers. We believe that these hydrocarbon–molecular–ion–implanted silicon epitaxial wafers will improve the device performance of CMOS image sensors.