Oxygen bubble formation and evolution during oxygen implantation and annealing of silicon-on-insulator material

Abstract

Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) material fabricated by high dose oxygen implantation (SIMOX) is a material increasingly used for higher speed and radiation hard circuits. During implantation a variety of structural changes occur, including the formation of defects, bubbles, precipitates, and the buried oxide layer. The topic of bubble formation and evolution has received only limited study. Sjoreen et al. first reported the presence of spherical, randomly distributed precipitates near the top surface of the silicon layer. El-Ghor et al. further examined these precipitates and proposed that they were cavities filled with oxygen. Maszara confirmed the presence of spheroids filled with oxygen in the silicon top surface region in the 1mA cm-2 as-implanted samples. In this work, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) techniques were used to investigate the effect of implantation conditions on the bubble formation and the effect of subsequent annealing conditions on the evolution of bubbles.