Abstract
Single crystal silicon is known to be subject to fatigue fracture on MEMS applications. However, underlying mechanism is still to be discussed. We discuss the relationship between the fatigue and shuffle-set dislocation in silicon. Recently, we have for the first time found that a shuffle-set dislocation was nucleated in a semiconductor silicon device that was subject to severe thermal processing. Also, we have investigated the shear stress dependences of the activation energies of shuffle-set and glide-set dislocation nucleation from a sharp corner in silicon using theoretical reaction pathway analysis. Two curves have a cross point, which means that shuffle-set dislocation is likely nucleated at high stress and low temperature (experimental condition) and glide-set dislocation is likely nucleated at low stress and high temperature. Our result explains the mechanism of shuffle-set dislocation nucleation.
