It was shown that considerable numbers of vacancy defects, introduced by MeV Si self-ion implantation, could survive annealing at 900C for 300s. These vacancy clusters were characterized by analyzing trap-limited Si interstitial diffusion. It was shown that the remaining vacancies were sufficient to reduce B diffusion. The study suggested that MeV ion implantation could be inserted before gate formation (involving high temperature annealing) to avoid irradiation damage.

High Thermal Stability of Vacancy Clusters Formed in MeV Si-Self-Ion-Implanted Si. L.Shao, P.E.Thompson, Q.Y.Chen, K.B.Ma, J.R.Liu, W.K.Chu: Applied Physics Letters, 2008, 93[4], 041908