It was recalled that end-of-range defects were interstitial-type dislocation loops which nucleated just beneath the crystalline/amorphous interface that was formed by ion implantation; after pre-amorphization of the substrate, and during ramping-up of the annealing. They arose from the presence of a high supersaturation of excess Si self-interstitial atoms that was located just beneath the crystalline/amorphous interface. Upon annealing, the mean radius of the defects increased while their density decreased via the exchange of Si self-interstitials between the loops. The number of interstitials which was stored in the loops remained constant. For sufficiently high thermal budgets, when nucleation was completed and when local equilibrium between extended and point defects was established, coarsening of the end-of-range defects could be modelled by means of Ostwald ripening theory; as applied to the dislocation-loop geometry. As expected from the theory, the square of the mean radius of the loop population increased with time while the loop density decreased in inverse proportional to time. The theoretical function which described the size distributions perfectly matched the temporal evolution of the experimental stack histograms for various annealing temperatures. Within the asymptotic steady-state coarsening regime, the activation energy for loop coarsening was 4.4eV, which was within the range of reported values for self-diffusion in Si. On the other hand, an activation energy of some 1 to 2eV was found during the transient period which preceded local equilibrium: that is, within the range of migration energies of self-interstitials. The limiting process of loop growth appeared to be diffusion, since this hypothesis led to the best fit between theory and experiment. The product of diffusivity and concentration was estimated, from the growth law of end-of-range defects, to be equal to about 1.8 x 107/s-cm at 1000C. This compared well with values given in the literature.

C.Bonafos, D.Mathiot, A.Claverie: Journal of Applied Physics, 1998, 83[6], 3008-17