Study of fluorine behavior in silicon by selective point defect injection

This letter reports a point defect injection study of 185 keV 2.3× 1015 cm-2 fluorine implanted silicon. After an inert anneal at 1000 °C, fluorine peaks are seen at depths of 0.3 Rp and Rp and a shoulder between 0.5-0.7 Rp. The shallow peak (at 0.3 Rp) is significantly smaller under interstitial injection than under both inert and vacancy injection conditions. For a longer anneal under interstitial injection, both the shallow peak and the shoulder are eliminated. These results support earlier work suggesting that the shallow fluorine peak is due to vacancy-fluorine clusters which are responsible for suppression of boron thermal diffusion in silicon. The elimination of the shallow fluorine peak and the shoulder is explained by the annihilation of vacancies in the clusters with injected interstitials. © 2005 American Institute of Physics.