Defect engineering and prevention of impurity gettering at Rp/2 in ion implanted silicon

Cu is especially suitable to decorate defects in silicon. The Cu decoration technique has been
applied for the detection of point defect clusters in the RP/2 region of Si+ ion implanted silicon. The results of
this technique are compared with the results obtained by other analysis techniques. Nanocavities at RP/2
could be observed only in cross section transmission electron microscopy specimen prepared by cleavage
technique. These nanocavities are probably the dominant gettering centres for Cu at RP/2. Small interstitial
clusters may exist there as well. The conditions for the formation and for the annealing of the gettering layer
at RP/2 have been determined. Impurity gettering at RP/2 can be prevented by a sequence of additional Si+
implantations to balance implantation-induced excess vacancies which are the origin of the nanocavities.