Lateral solid-phase epitaxy of Si induced by focused ion beams

Thin 200-nm-thick Si crystals were grown in Si layers amorphized with 800-keV As2+ ions by inducing lateral solid-phase epitaxy at 500 deg C with a 140-keV Si2+ psuedo-linear ion beam formed by scanning a point-focused beam at 5 kHz. It is shown that reduction of dose rate of the ion beam is crucially important to induce the epitaxy because the amount of damage produced by the ions significantly increases with the dose rate and even amorphization occurs at a higher dose rate. (author)