Defect clusters in silicon: Impact on the performance of large-area devices

Defect clusters, consisting of agglomerations of dislocations, stacking faults and grain boundaries in an otherwise low defect density wafer, are caused by thermal stresses during the crystal growth. Defect clusters are ideal sites for impurity precipitation. A phenomenological approach to calculate the characteristics of a device with extended defects shows that a defect cluster can produce extensive shunting. Finally, a network model is used to show that clustering of defects can cause significantly more degradation in the device performance compared to a situation if the total number of defects are uniformly distributed over the entire device.