Oxygen precipitation and the generation of dislocations in silicon
Oxygen-rich precipitates in silicon, and the generation of dislocations at the interfaces between the precipitates and the matrix were observed. The precipitates are square-shaped plates with <110> sides and (100) habit planes. Prismatic dislocation loops are generated in silicon by the mechanism of prismatic punching. The loops are identified as interstitial loops with ½ <110> Burgers vectors and <110> axis. An ideal loop is rhombus-shaped with line senses in <112> directions. Nucleation of loops follows the mechanism of Ashby and Johnson (1969): a shear loop is nucleated on an initial slip plane and completes a rhombus-shaped prismatic loop by repeated cross-slips. To our knowledge, the loop nucleation process is identified for the first time for a system completely under internal stress. © 1976, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.