Carrier lifetime measurements were used to characterize residual defects after low-energy implanting of Si ions followed by annealing (900 or 1000C). The implantation was found to result in 2 distinct regions of lifetime-reducing damage. Firstly, a high recombination region, most likely due to stable dislocation loops, remained near to the surface. In addition, deeply propagated defects, which were not present before annealing, were also detected. These deep defects, which were possibly Si interstitials, diffused so rapidly during annealing that their distribution became effectively uniform to a depth of 100μm. Annealing at higher temperatures was found to reduce the severity of the surface and the deeply propagated defects.

Carrier Lifetime Studies of Deeply Penetrating Defects in Self-Ion Implanted Silicon. D.H.Macdonald, H.Maeckel, S.Doshi, W.Brendle, A.Cuevas, J.S.Williams, M.J.Conway: Applied Physics Letters, 2003, 82[18], 2987-9