Stress analysis and dislocation cluster generation in silicon crystal with artificial grain boundaries

Abstract

We conducted a dislocation and stress analysis on various grain boundaries (GBs) using silicon ingots that contained artificial GBs to permit systematic comparison of experimental and analytical results. Through photoluminescence imaging, we found that the number of dislocation clusters generated around the 〈1 1 0〉-oriented GBs was significantly higher than those around the 〈1 0 0〉-oriented GBs. The stress analysis revealed that this difference is linked to the maximum shear stress around the GB. However, there were some GBs where dislocation cluster generation was not observed despite the presence of high shear stress. For most of these GBs, the direction of the maximum shear stress in the 12 slip system of silicon crystal was found to be oblique downward to the growth direction, which appears to inhibit dislocation propagation.