In nitrogen-doped silicon a strong anneal-induced resistivity increase was reported but remained poorly understood. It was shown here that the complicated evolution of the resistivity depth profiles could be reproduced by a relatively simple model based on the out-diffusion of vacancies and of nitrogen trimers N3. Both these species were produced by dissociation of VN3 defects that originated from grown-in neutral vacancy-nitrogen defects. The major deep donors were attributed to N3 defects. The deduced effective vacancy diffusivity DV at 1000C was almost coincident with the value extrapolated from low-temperature data by Watkins. At 900C, DV was remarkably smaller due to trapping of vacancies by dimeric nitrogen, N2, that was pronounced at lower T.

Vacancy Out-Diffusion in Nitrogen-Doped Silicon. V.Voronkov, R.Falster: Physica Status Solidi C, 2012, 9[10-11], 1987-91