Solids which were subjected to bombardment by energetic reactive ions were considered to be an inhomogeneous solid solution with new phase inclusions. The inclusions were formed at the bombardment stage and acted, at high temperatures, as spatially distributed sinks for the solute. An analytical so-called diffusion-sink model was generalized in order to describe the decay of the solid solution when growth of the new phase was controlled by interface kinetics. The theoretical predictions were compared with the experimentally observed growth of SiO2 precipitates in annealed Si which had been bombarded with relatively low doses of O. A so-called asymmetry of the O atom absorption rate at the oxide/Si interface was investigated. It was also shown that the supersaturation of Si interstitials would not slow the intrinsic Si oxidation at high temperatures (of the order of 1100C). A formula was derived for the critical concentration of self-interstitials, in the Si matrix, for the case where oxide growth was restricted by the blockade of additional interstitials.

M.J.Barabanenkov: Journal of Applied Physics, 1995, 78[4], 2333-7