Structural evolution of thermal annealed Si(0 0 1) surface layers fabricated by plasma immersion He+ implantation

Highlights: • Si wafers were treated with plasma immersion He⁺ implantation. • A multilayer structure with amorphous and damaged crystalline layers was formed. • The multilayer structure is stable to heating up to 1073 K. • Silicon nanocrystallites were revealed at the amorphous/crystalline interface. • Top-most amorphous SiO_x and dense Si sublayers form a 15-nm protective cap. Structural evolution in Si(0 0 1) surface layers after high-dose (D = 5 × 10¹⁷ cm^–2) low-energy (2 and 5 keV) plasma immersion He⁺ ion implantation (He⁺ PIII) and subsequent annealing at 853 and 1073 K was studied by complementary structural sensitive methods (TEM, XRR, RBS, and AFM). Formation of a three-layer structure (amorphous a-SiO_x sublayer at the surface, amorphous a-Si sublayer with large size helium-filled bubbles, and heavily damaged crystalline c-Si sublayer containing small-size bubbles and Si nanocrystallites) was observed for both implantation energies. This three-layer structure is retained after annealing. It was shown that the thickness of the oxide sublayer does not depend on implantation energy and does not change after annealing. This amorphous oxide sublayer together with dense top part of the a-Si sublayer forms a cap layer with a thickness of 15 nm that can be considered as a protective layer for the sublayers containing He-filled bubbles and Si nanocrystallites. The Si nanocrystallites were revealed at the boundary of the a-Si and the c-Si sublayers both in as-implanted at 5 keV and annealed samples.