Out-diffusion profiles of nitrogen, produced by 900C annealing and monitored by secondary ion mass spectroscopy, clearly showed that the N community consists of three non-interacting components. The A component (dominant at higher N concentration) was represented by a species that out-diffused by the dissociation mechanism. The B component (the only one at lower N content) exists mostly in a precipitated form. The C component was an independent out-diffusing species. The A component could be assigned to one of the even-sized species: N2, N4 or N6. The most likely assignment, free of controversies, was to hexamers N6 transported by dissociation into minor fast-diffusing trimers N3. The B component, in its dissolved form, was then assigned to the N2/N1 subsystem of immobile dominant dimers and fast-diffusing minor monomers. For the C component, a tentative assignment was to N4 or N5.

Multispecies Nitrogen Diffusion in Silicon. V.V.Voronkov, R.Falster: Journal of Applied Physics, 2006, 100[8], 083511