Weak beam observation of dislocation loops in silicon

Abstract

SUMMARY Weak-beam microscopy has been used to examine the dislocation loops formed when ion implanted silicon is annealed in the temperature range 900–1300 K. The extinction distances of about 10 nm, resulting from the use of large deviation parameters S' enable stacking fault fringes of 4nm spacing to be resolved in faulted loops. The projected shape of the dislocation loops and the variable contrast along the perimeter of the bounding partial dislocation enables the habit planes of the dislocation loops to be determined from inspection. These together with the width of the dislocation image, which is about 3 nm enables the type of loop to be characterized completely from a single micrograph.