Hydrogen blister depth in boron and hydrogen coimplanted n-type silicon

We have studied the depths of hydrogen surface blisters in < 100 > n-type silicon, which formed after B+H coimplantation and heat treatment. The silicon substrates had three different dopant levels, ranging from 10(14) to 10(19) cm(-3). The Si substrates were first implanted with B+ ions at 147 keV to a dose of 10(15) cm(-2). Some of the B-implanted samples were left in their as-implanted state; others were electrically activated by a rapid thermal anneal. The samples were then implanted with 40 keV H+ to a dose of 5x10(16) cm(-2). At the chosen implantation energies, the hydrogen- and boron-implantation distributions overlap. Following H+ implantation, all the samples were vacuum annealed and examined by ion-beam analysis and scanning electron microscopy. In all cases, the blister depth was consistently found to be strongly correlated with the H damage profile rather than the H or B concentration profiles. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951(99)00851-7].