Fluorine in Si: Native-defect complexes and the suppression of impurity diffusion

The transient enhanced diffusion of acceptor impurities severely affects the realization of ultrahigh doping regions in miniaturized Si-based devices. Fluorine codoping has been found to suppress this transient diffusion, but the mechanism underlying this effect is not understood. It has been proposed that fluorine-impurity or fluorine--native-defect interactions may be responsible. Here we clarify this mechanism combining first-principles theoretical studies of fluorine in Si and purposely designed experiments on Si structures containing boron and fluorine. The central interaction mechanism is the preferential binding of fluorine to Si-vacancy dangling bonds and the consequent formation of vacancy-fluorine complexes. The latter effectively act as traps for the excess self-interstitials that would normally cause boron transient enhanced diffusion. Instead, fluorine-boron interactions are marginal and do not play any significant role. Our results are also consistent with other observations such as native-defect trapping and bubble formation.