Excess vacancies in high energy ion implanted SiGe

Excess vacancies generated by high energy implantation with 1.2 MeV Si+ and 2 MeV Ge+ ions in SiGe were investigated after rapid thermal annealing at 900 °C. Excess vacancies were probed by decoration with Cu and measuring the Cu profile by secondary ion mass spectrometry. Cross section transmission electron microscopy of cleaved specimen enabled us to visualize nanocavities resulting from agglomeration of excess vacancies. The ion-induced damage in SiGe increases with increasing Ge fraction of the alloy. The amorphization threshold decreases and the extension of a buried amorphous layer increases for given implantation and annealing conditions.
In contrast to ballistic simulations of excess defect generation where perfect local self-annihilation is assumed the concentrations of excess vacancies and excess interstitials in SiGe increase with increasing Ge fraction. The main contribution to the high excess vacancy concentration in SiGe was found to result from the inefficient recombination of vacancies and interstitials. The widely used +1 model describing the ion-induced damage in Si is not valid for SiGe.