A dlts investigation of the effect of ion mass, fluence and energy on the introduction of a higher-order vacancy cluster in noble gas ion bombarded n-Si

We have recently reported the annealing and electrical properties of three new families (Nl, N2 and N3) of vacancy complexes introduced in 1 keV He-, Ne- and Ar-ion bombarded nSi. In this paper we have employed deep level transient spectroscopy to investigate the ion mass, fluence and energy dependence of the introduction of N l-defects. We observed an increase in the intensity of Nl-defects with increasing mass of bombarding ions for a fluence of IxlO12 cm"2 and flux of 1x10" cm"V, which we have correlated with the mass dependence of nuclear energy deposition. The ratio of the intensities of Nl-defects to VO-center, [N1]/[VO], increased by ~5 when bombarding with Ar- compared to He-ions. Increasing the Ar-ion fluence from IxlO12 cm"2 to IxlO14 cm'2 for a flux of 5xl010cm"V increased the intensity of Nl-defects by -20 times, while [N1]/[VO] increased by a factor ~2.3. Nl-defects were not created by 5.4 MeV alphaparticle irradiation, but were present in varying relative concentrations in 1 to ISOkeV He-ion bombarded n-Si.