Plasma immersion nitrogen implantation into silicon and rapid thermal electron beam annealing for surface structuring

(1 0 0) and (1 1 1) silicon substrates were implanted with 10 keV N2+ ions using plasma immersion ion implantation (PI3). Series of specimens were implanted in the fluence range from 0.5 to 1.6 × 1016 cm−2 and subsequently annealed at 1000 °C (radiation temperature) for 60 s with a raster scanned electron beam (EB-RTA) to investigate surface structuring after EB-RTA. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) revealed that the combination of PI3 and EB-RTA resulted in a roughening of the surface on the lower 100 nm scale depending on the nitrogen fluence used in the experiments. Similar ion implantation and annealing protocols using an accelerator based system in conjunction with EB-RTA showed, however, smooth surfaces on the 3 nm scale. Selected results are presented providing evidence for the possibility of controlling the surface structuring of implanted surfaces via PI3 process parameters.