Trapping of migrating Si interstitials at substrate/epitaxial interfaces during high-energy Si ion bombardment was observed. It showed that the interface of Si/Si layer, grown by molecular-beam epitaxy, was a strong sink for self-interstitials during MeV bombardment at room temperature. This finding was applied it as a decoration technique to study evolution of interfacial dislocations. After the thermal annealing of Si/Si layers at 450 to 600C, samples were bombarded with MeV Si ions at room temperature. Trapped Si interstitials at the interface were quantitatively measured by Rutherford backscattering spectrometry. The integration of trapped interstitials, which indicated an activation energy for the interfacial defect release of 0.65eV, suggested a weak binding of stored Si atoms in the interfacial dislocations.

Study of Interfacial Dislocations of Si Substrate/Epitaxial Layer by Self-Interstitial Decoration Technique. L.Shao, X.Wang, I.Rusakova, H.Chen, J.Liu, P.E.Thompson, W.K.Chu: Applied Physics Letters, 2003, 83[5], 934-6