Thermal evolution of interstitial defects in implanted silicon

We review the structure and energetics of the extended defects found in ion implanted Si as a function of annealing conditions and show that the defect kinetics can be described by an Ostwald ripening process whereby the defects exchange Si atoms and evolve in size and type to minimize their formation energy. Finally, we present a physically based model to predict the evolution of extrinsic defects during annealing through the calculation of defect densities, size distributions, number of clustered interstitials and free-interstitial supersaturation. We show some successful applications of our model to a variety of experimental conditions and give an example of its predictive capabilities at ultra low implantation energies.