Radiation-enhanced diffusion of impurity atoms in silicon layers

TL;DR

This paper models radiation-enhanced phosphorus diffusion in silicon during high-energy proton implantation and plasma treatment, revealing how impurity profiles are affected by irradiation and proposing potential applications in semiconductor doping.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical model of impurity diffusion via impurity-silicon self-interstitial pairs under irradiation, linking migration lengths to proton energy and analyzing impurity profile formation.

Findings

Migration length of silicon self-interstitials decreases with proton energy.

Impurity depletion occurs during plasma treatment except near the insulator interface.

Theoretical profiles suggest potential for controlled doping in semiconductor fabrication.

Abstract

Modeling of the phosphorus radiation-enhanced diffusion in the course of implantation of high-energy protons into an elevated-temperature silicon substrate and during its treatment in a hydrogen-containing plasma with addition of a diffusant has been carried out. It follows from the results obtained that the radiation-enhanced diffusion occurs by means of formation, migration, and dissociation of "impurity atom -- silicon self-interstitial" pairs being in a local thermodynamic equilibrium with substitutionally dissolved impurity atoms and nonequilibrium point defects generated due to external irradiation. The resulting value of the average migration length of nonequilibrium silicon self-interstitials decreases from 0.19 micrometer for proton energy of 140 keV to 0.09 and 0.08 micrometer for energies of 110 and 80 keV, respectively. The decrease of the average migration length with the proton energy can be due to the interaction of silicon self-interstitials with the vacancies generated at the surface or with the defects formed in the phosphorus implanted region. Based on the pair diffusion mechanism, a theoretical investigation of the form of impurity profiles that can be created in thin silicon layers due to the radiation-enhanced diffusion was carried out. It is shown that depletion of the uniformly doped silicon layer occurs during plasma treatment except for the silicon -- insulator interface where a narrow region with a high impurity concentration is formed. The results of calculations give a clear evidence in favor of further investigation of various doping processes based on the radiation-enhanced diffusion, especially the processes of plasma doping, to develop a cheap method for the formation of strictly assigned impurity distributions in the local semiconductor domains.