A plan-view transmission electron microscopic study was made of the distribution, geometry and time-dependent annealing behavior of type-II (end-of-range) dislocation loops that were introduced by 50keV Si+ ion implantation to a dose of 1015/cm2. The size and density distributions of the loops were quantitatively analyzed, and the loop growth behavior was compared with that predicted by a bulk diffusion mechanism or a glide and self-climb mechanism. It was shown that the loop growth rate was approximately constant for annealing temperatures of between 700 and 1000C, and that the growth was governed by bulk-diffusion. Regions of growth and shrinkage were investigated, for various annealing temperatures, in terms of the interstitial supersaturation and the critical loop growth radius. The activation energy for loop growth was deduced, from an Arrhenius plot of loop growth rate versus the reciprocal of the annealing temperature, to be equal to 1.0eV.

J.Liu, M.E.Law, K.S.Jones: Solid-State Electronics, 1995, 38[7], 1305-12