High sensitivity boron quantification in bulk silicon using the [sup 11]B(p,α[sub 0])[sup 8]Be nuclear reaction

Abstract

There is a great need to quantify sub-ppm levels of boron in bulk silicon. There are several methods to analyze B in Si: Nuclear Reaction Analysis using the 11B(p,α0)8Be reaction exhibits a quantification limit of some hundreds ppm of B in Si. Heavy Ion Elastic Recoil Detection Analysis offers a detection limit of 5 to 10 at. ppm. Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry is the method of choice of the semiconductor industry for the analysis of B in Si. This work verifies the use of NRA to quantify B in Si, and the corresponding detection limits. Proton beam with 1.6 up to 2.6 MeV was used to obtain the cross-section of the 11B(p,α0)8Be nuclear reaction at 170° scattering angle. The results show good agreementwith literature indicating that the quantification of boron in silicon can be achieved at 100 ppm level (high sensitivity) at LAMFI-IFUSP with about 16% uncertainty. Increasing the detection solid angle and the collected beam charge, can reduce the detection limit to less than 100 ppm meeting present technological needs.