Formation kinetics of oxygen thermal donors in silicon

The formation kinetics of oxygen thermal donors in silicon was investigated. The result indicates that the diffusivity of interstitial oxygen can be used to explain the aggregation process of oxygen atoms at the thermal donor annealing temperatures. For the annealing time <105 s, the thermal donor concentration increases linearly with increasing time, while the number of oxygen atoms per donor remains unchanged. This result implies that an equilibrium concentration of oxygen atoms in the electrically active clusters could exist at the donor anneal temperature.