Microscopical aspects of boron diffusion in ultralow energy implanted silicon

The transient enhanced diffusion of ultralow energy implanted B is reported in this letter. The mechanism giving rise to an enhancement of the diffusion during postimplantation anneal is investigated in detail by monitoring the diffusion of B as a function of temperature in the range 600-750 degrees C, for implant energies of 500 eV and 1 keV. The contribution of several classes of defect clusters to the anomalous diffusion phenomenon has been detected and interpreted. Both an ultrafast diffusion, occurring during the ramp-up of the thermal process, and a transient enhancement of the diffusion with characteristic decay times shorter by orders of magnitude than the known transient enhanced diffusion lifetimes, have been evidenced. The activation energy for the enhanced diffusion has been measured and found to be 1.7 eV.