Electrical and Physical Investigation of Defect Annihilation in Arsenic Implanted Silicon

A study is made of the effect of thermal annealing on defect annihilation in arsenic implanted silicon. The combination of electrical measurements and transmission electronic microscopy analysis allows us to demonstrate the existence of a low energy thermally activated process. This process occurs in the highly damaged surface layer induced by the arsenic implantation and is efficient well below the solid phase epitaxy transition temperature. It is suggested that point defect migration should play an important role in the electrical impurity activation at low annealing temperatures.