The purpose of this study was to detect a fatigue damage of single crystal silicon under cyclic loading using schottky barrier diode. The schottky and ohimic contacts of Au thin film on n-type silicon was fabricated after (211) oriented silicon substate was cut into specimen with a rectangular form of 6mm×29 mm by dicing saw. Torsional fatigue test performed under the conditions of controlled temperature 25°C and 80% RH in environmental chamber to accelerate damage accumulation. Compared to I-V characteristics of diode before and after fatigue test, increase in leak current was confirmed. Several line contrast around schottky electrodes were also observed using SEM. From these results, it suggested that increases in leak current originated from crystal defects in silicon.
Izumi et al. (Wed,) studied this question.