Mechanisms of Focused Ion Beam Implantation Damage and Recovery in Si

The ion current density in focused ion beam (FIB) systems, 0.1–10 A cm−2, is at least three orders of magnitude greater than that in commercial broad ion beam implanters. This large difference in ion current density is expected to strongly affect the damage recovery dynamics. In this work, we study the ion implantation damage and recovery of Si(100) substrates implanted with 1 × 1012–5 × 1015 Si cm−2 fluences of 60-keV Si2+ at normal incidence in a mass-selecting FIB. Additionally, damage and recovery in different broad ion beam implants of 60-keV Si+ were studied for a comparison. For recovering implantation damage, specimens were annealed for different times at 730–900°C in an ultra-high purity nitrogen ambient, and for characterizing damage and recovery, Raman spectroscopy at wavelengths 405 nm and 514 nm was carried out. Raman measurements comprised of measurements of crystalline Si (c-Si) peak height of the peak at 520 cm−1, and the peak shift relative to that of un-implanted reference Si. Our measurements of structural damage—calculated from the attenuation in the c-Si peak heights for the implants relative to that of unimplanted Si(100)—indicates that the FIB implantations lead to a greater as-implanted damage but also typically lead to a better recovery than that for the commercial broad-area implants. The underlying mechanisms for these observations are discussed.