Hydrogen-related complexes as the stressing species in high-fluence, hydrogen-implanted, single-crystal silicon

This work is devoted to the characterization of the Si:H system obtained by high-fluence, low-energy, hydrogen implantation into single-crystal silicon. The implanted hydrogen profile and the ones resulting after thermal annealing in the range 100-800 °C are detected by secondary-ion mass spectrometry and elastic-recoil detection analysis. The displacement field in the crystal, measured by channeling Rutherford-backscattering spectrometry, is found to depend on the direct radiation damage, the extended defects formed after ion implantation (revealed by transmission electron microscopy), and the implanted species. The contribution to the displacement field due to hydrogen-related defects has a characteristic ''reverse annealing'' in the range 100-400 °C, essentially due to their formation kinetics.