Abstract: The effect of annealing atmosphere on the behavior of oxygen precipitates and their induced defects in Czochralski silicon during high temperature annealing is investigated.The silicon wafers were subjected to a low-high two-step annealing followed by a high-temperature annealing in five different atmospheres.It was found that the amount of dissolved oxygen precipitates in the high temperature annealing is independent of the annealing atmospheres,whereas the annealing atmospheres influence the distribution of the bulk micro-defects (BMDs) in the cross section of the wafers.It was confirmed that the high-temperature annenaling in various atmospheres induced different point defects in the wafer and thus affected the distribution of BMDs.This investigation could be beneficial for the selection of annealing atmosphere in the internal gettering process during the manufacture of the integrated circuits.

Key words: Czochralski silicon, oxygen precipitates, internal gettering