It was recalled that the enhanced diffusion of impurities that followed ion implantation was rapidly quenched. The quenching of this transient enhanced diffusion was associated with the annealing of implantation damage, via the diffusion of point defects to the bulk or to the surface. It was assumed that either the surface or the bulk was the predominant annealing site. Here, these assumptions were assessed by observing the reduction of transient enhanced diffusion in a buried marker while the surface was etched so as to bring it closer to the implantation damage. The results revealed a considerable reduction in the transient enhanced diffusion with surface etching. This demonstrated that the surface played a key role in the annealing of implantation damage. Numerical modelling permitted the extraction of the surface recombination length of interstitials at 800C. Only a value of 0.1 was consistent with the data.

D.R.Lim, C.S.Rafferty, F.P.Klemens: Applied Physics Letters, 1995, 67[16], 2302-4