Ballistic self-annealing during ion implantation

Ion implantation conditions are considered during which the energy, dissipated in the collision cascades, is low enough to ensure that the defects, which are generated during these collisions, consist primarily of vacancies and interstitial atoms. It is proposed that ballistic self-annealing is possible when the point defect density becomes high enough, provided that none, or very few, of the interstitial atoms escape from the layer being implanted. Under these conditions, the fraction of ballistic atoms, generated within the collision cascades from substitutional sites, decreases with increasing ion dose. Furthermore, the fraction of ballistic atoms, which finally end up within vacancies, increases with increasing vacancy density. Provided the crystal structure does not collapse, a damage threshold should be approached where just as many atoms are knocked out of substitutional sites as the number of ballistic atoms that fall back into vacancies. Under these conditions, the average point defect density should approach saturation. This model is applied to recently published Raman data that have been measured on a 3 MeV He+-ion implanted diamond (Orwa et al 2000 Phys. Rev. B 62 5461). The conclusion is reached that this ballistic self-annealing model describes the latter data better than a model in which it is assumed that the saturation in radiation damage is caused by amorphization of the implanted layer. (author)