High resolution electrical studies of vacancy-rich and interstitial-rich regions in ion-implanted silicon

A combination of high resolution Laplace deep level transient spectroscopy (LDLTS) and direct capture cross-section measurements has been used to investigate whether deep electronic states related to interstitial-type defects introduced by ion implantation originated from point or extended defects, prior to any annealing. n-type silicon was implanted with doses of 1×109 cm–2 of silicon, germanium, or erbium, and comparison was made with proton- and electron-irradiated material. When measured by LDLTS at 225 K, the region of the implant thought to contain mostly vacancy-type defects exhibited a complex spectrum with five closely spaced defect-related energy levels, with energies close to EC-400 meV. The region nearer the tail of the implant, which should be dominated by interstitial-type defects, exhibited a simpler LDLTS spectrum with three closely spaced levels being recorded, again with energies centered on EC-400 meV. Annealing at 180 °C did not completely remove any of the defect peaks, suggesting that the energy levels were not due to the simple vacancy-phosphorus center. Direct electron capture cross-section measurements revealed that the defects in the tail of the implanted volume, prior to any annealing, were not simple point defects, as they exhibited nonexponential capture properties. This is attributed to the presence of extended defects in this region. By contrast, defects with the same activation energy in proton- and electron-irradiated silicon exhibited point-defect-like exponential capture.