Evolution of dislocation loops in silicon in an inert ambient—I

Abstract

A plan-view TEM study has been made of the distribution, geometry and the time-dependent annealing behavior of type II (end of range) dislocation loops introduced by 1 × 10 15/cm 2 50 keV Si + implantation into silicon. The size and density distributions of the loops have been quantitatively analyzed, and loop growth behavior has been compared with that predicted by a bulk-diffusion mechanism and by a glide and self-climb mechanism. It has been shown that the loop growth rate is approximately constant for each annealing temperature (700–1000°C) and that the growth is governed by the bulk-diffusion mechanism. Regions of growth and shrinkage have been investigated for different annealing temperatures in terms of interstitial supersaturation and the critical loop growth radius. The activation energy for loop growth is determined to be 1.0 ± 0.2 eV from the Arrhenius plot of loop growth rate versus the reciprocal of annealing temperature.