Hyperdoping of Si by ion implantation and pulsed laser melting

Ion implantation followed by pulsed laser melting is an extensively-studied method for hyperdoping Si with impurity concentrations that exceed the equilibrium solubility limit by orders of magnitude. In the last decade, hyperdoped Si has attracted renewed interest for its potential as an intermediate band material. In this review, we first examine the important experimental results on both solid and liquid phase crystal regrowth from early laser annealing studies. The highly non-equilibrium regrowth kinetics following pulsed laser melting and its implications for dopant incorporation processes are discussed. We then review recent work in hyperdoped Si for enhanced sub-band gap photoresponse and give a brief discussion on photodetector device performance.