Ostwald ripening of {113} defects precursors and transient enhanced diffusion

The ripening of ion-beam generated point defects into extended defects has been investigated in detail. The interstitial supersaturation has been extracted from boron marker-layer diffusion after annealing under non-equilibrium defect conditions. We measured a very high initial supersaturation followed by a decrease over many orders of magnitude with a characteristic "plateau" related to the presence of {113} defects. A continuum inverse model has been used to properly describe the ripening of point defects into clusters and their evolution in the presence of a remote sink, e.g. the surface. It evidences that a nonconservative Ostwald ripening process takes place inside the defect band during the annealing and sustains the interstitial supersaturation. The model reveals moreover an oscillatory behaviour of dissociation energies of the nanometer-sized defects which are responsible for the initial high supersaturation. These defects are believed to be {113} precursors.