The annealing of vacancy-related defect complexes in Czochralski- and float-zone crystals of n-type material was studied by means of deep level transient spectroscopy. Vacancy-related defects such as VO and V2 were introduced by implantation (C, Si, Ge, I) using very low doses. It was found that the overall thermal stability of both V2 and VO was almost independent of the mass of the primary projectile. After the initial annealing stages (up to 200C) a significant increase in the normalized V2 and VO signals was detected for heavy (Ge, I) ions. Depth profiling of Czochralski samples which had been implanted with Si ions revealed a substantial narrowing of the V2 and VO distributions after the initial annealing stages. This was explained in terms of the preferential formation and subsequent dissociation of high-order vacancy clusters at a depth which corresponded to the peak of the implantation damage.

Impurity-Assisted Annealing of Point Defect Complexes in Ion-Implanted Silicon P.Pellegrino, A.Y.Kuznetsov, B.G.Svensson: Physica B, 1999, 273-274, 489-92