Overview

This volume contains nearly all of the papers presented at the Symposium on "Defects and Qualities of Semiconductors" which was held in Tokyo on May 17-18, 1984, under the sponsorship of the SOCIETY OF NON-TRADITIONAL TECHNOLOGY. The Symposium was organized by the promoting committee of the research project "Quality Developement of Semiconductors by Utilization of Crystal Defects" sponsored by the Science and Technology Agency of Japan. Defect study in semiconductor engineering started originally with seeking methods how to suppress generation of harmful defects during device processing in order to achieve a high yield of device fabrication. Recently, a new trend has appeared in which crystal defects are positively utilized to improve the device performance and reliability. A typical example is the intrinsic gettering technique for Czochralski silicon. Thus, a new term "DEFECT ENGINEERING" was born. It is becoming more important to control density and distribution of defects than to eliminate all the defects. Very precise and deep knowledge on defects is required to establish such techniques as generation and development of defects desired depending on type of devices and degree of integration. Electrical, optical and mechanical effects of defects should be also understood correctly. Such knowledge is essential even for eliminating defects from some specified device regions. It is the time now to investigate defect properties and defect kinetics in an energetic way. From this point of view, all the speakers in this symposium were invited among the most active investigators in the field of defect engineering in Japan.