Reduction of boron transient enhanced diffusion in silicon by low-energy cluster ion implantation

Future integrated circuits require shallow pn junctions with a depth below 50 nm and, therefore, low energy ion beams are necessary. Cluster ions can realize both goals of low-energy and high-current ion beams quite easily, because the kinetic energy of a cluster is shared among constituent atoms. Another advantage of cluster ion implantation is that the substrate damage induced by ion bombardment can be controlled by changing the cluster size. As a consequence, the transient enhanced diffusion (TED) of the dopant during annealing can be controlled in cluster ion implantation. We have used the polyatomic cluster, decaborane (B10H14) to form very shallow p(+) junctions. During 900 degrees C annealing, the diffusion of boron atoms implanted at 3 keV was strongly suppressed compared with that implanted at 10 keV implantation. The difference in defect distribution between 10 and 3 keV implantation caused the different annealing behavior. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.