Synergetic effects of dual-beam implantation on the microstructural development in silicon

Abstract

We report a synergy effect on the microstructural development of silicon specimens as a result of dual-beam high temperature irradiation/implantation. In situ transmission electron microscopy experiments using two different experimental setups have been used, where the primary 50 keV Co+ ion implantation beam was supplemented with either a 300 keV electron beam or a 500 keV Si+ ion beam. In both cases, the secondary beam intensity was such that both beams created comparable overall primary damage. Completely different microstructural response has been found in these two cases. An intensive electron irradiation was found to sharply accelerate the evolution of dislocation structure, only weakly affecting the disilicide kinetics. On the contrary, the Si ion beam weakly affected the kinetics of either dislocation loops or coherent CoSi2 precipitates, but drastically increased the number density of thermodynamically unstable semicoherent precipitates. Possible microstructural reasons for the observed effects and the implications for both dislocation loop and cobalt disilicide nucleation mechanisms in high-temperature implanted TEM samples are discussed and supported by detailed molecular dynamics calculations of annealing of cascade remnants produced by the energetic silicon recoils