Ostwald ripening of end-of-range defects in silicon

End-of-range (EOR) defects are interstitial type dislocation loops which nucleate just beneath the crystalline/amorphous (c/a) interface formed by ion implantation in Si, after the preamorphization of the substrate, and during the ramping-up of the anneal. They originate from the presence of a high supersaturation of “excess” Si self-interstitial atoms located just beneath the c/a interface. Upon annealing, the mean radius of the defects increases while their density decreases through the exchange of Si self-interstitial atoms between the loops. The number of interstitials stored in the loops stays constant. For sufficiently high thermal budgets, when the nucleation is finished, and when the local equilibrium between extended and point defects is established, the coarsening of the EOR defects can be modeled through the Ostwald ripening theory applied to the dislocation loops geometry. Indeed, and as expected from the theory, the square of the mean radius of the loop population increases with time while th...