Controlled nucleation of dislocations by a spatially localized stress field

We analyze the nucleation of dislocations in silicon at spatially localized stress fields generated by silicon nitride pads having a high intrinsic stress. The nucleation and final configuration of the dislocations were studied using hot-stage transmission electron microscopy and were compared with dislocation simulations based on calculations of the stress fields around the pads. We find that the simulated configurations match well with the experimental data, and we show that the dislocation configuration can be controlled by the pad size. © 2005 American Institute of Physics.