Surface softening in silicon by ion implantation

Abstract

Load-variant microhardness tests have been used to investigate the hardness behaviour of ion-implanted (1 1 1) silicon wafers. A variety of ion doses, energies and species, including n-type, p-type and isovalent ions, have been implanted. At the high doses used (1 to 8 x 10¹⁷ ions cm²⁻), all implantations resulted in a surface amorphous layer being formed. The microhardness behaviour has been interpreted in terms of the presence of a surface layer of lower hardness than the substrate. The thickness of this layer has been investigated experimentally using Rutherford backscattering and the results correlated with simple theoretical predictions. Finally, the microhardness behaviour of a soft layer on a harder substrate has been modelled in order to try to predict the hardness variations arising from differing layer thicknesses and different indentation sizes. It is concluded that the amorphous layer produced by implantation appears to show no variation of microhardness with load and has a hardness typically between 400 and 700 Vickers (VHN). Further, the previously reported “critical dose” of ∼ 4 x 10¹⁷ ions cm⁻² necessary to observe significant surface softening seems to correspond to the regime in which the amorphous layer shows a rapid increase with dose.