Vacancies in growth-rate-varied CZ silicon crystal observed by low-temperature ultrasonic measurements

The low-temperature ultrasonic experiments are performed to measure the distribution of vacancy concentration in the ingot of the Czochralski (CZ) silicon crystal grown with the pulling rate gradually lowered. The elastic softening similar to that we recently found for the floating-zone-grown silicon crystals is observed for the so-called vacancy-rich region of the ingot which contains no voids or dislocation clusters. We further uncover that the interstitial-rich region in the ingot exhibits no such elastic softening, confirming our previous conclusion that the defects responsible for the low-temperature elastic softening are the vacancies. We also disclose that the elastic softening is absent for the ring-like oxidation stacking fault (R-OSF) region of the ingot. The measured distribution of the vacancy concentration indicates that the minority point defects are perfectly cancelled by the majority point defects during the CZ crystal growth.