The influence of electric field on the formation of radiation damage in silicon

The current ideas on the mechanism of radiation damage formation upon particle bombardment of semiconductors can be outlined as follows: 1) initiation of a collision cascade forming a damaged area enhanced with vacancies V and interstitials I; 2) partial V-I recombination and spatial separation of survived V and I; 3) formation of stable defects through quasi-chemical reactions involving V, I and impurity atoms. These concepts appeared to be extremely helpful since they accounted for the data obtained from numerous experimental studies. (author)