Monte Carlo modeling of amorphization resulting from ion implantation in Si Lourdes Pelaz a, * , Luis A. Marqu es a , Mar  ıa Aboy a , George Gilmer b , Luis A. Bail  on a , Juan Barbolla a a Departamento Electricidad y Electronica, Universidad de Valladolid, Campus Miguel Delibes s/n, 47011 Valladolid, Spain b Agere Systems, 600 Mountain Avenue, Murray Hill, NJ 07974, USA Abstract WeproposeanatomisticmodeltodescribethedamagegenerationduringionirradiationinSianditsevolutionupon anneal.WehaveincludednewfeaturestotheclassicalmodelsusedtodescribedamageincrystallineSi,thatallowusto extend the atomistic approach to the modeling of continuous amorphous layers. The elementary units to describe the defective lattice are Si interstitials, vacancies and the bond defect, which is a local distortion of the lattice without any excess or deficit of atoms. More complex defect structures can be formed by the coalescence of these elementary units. The competition between the damage generation and its annihilation determines the damage accumulation that eventually may lead to amorphous layers. The same model is used for amorphizing and non-amorphizing implants, and the amorphization is the result of the simulation itself and not established as an input parameter. Ó 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PACS: 61.80.Az; 82.20.Wt Keywords: Ion implantation; Amorphization; Monte Carlo modeling 1. Introduction When energetic ions strike a silicon substrate they create zones of disorder. The lattice in these disordered regions exhibits different damage con- figurations going from isolated point defects or point defect clusters in crystalline silicon, to con- tinuous amorphous layers, as the dose of the im- planted ions increases and the damage from the ions accumulates. The heating of the wafer during ion implantation can impact the damage as some healing may occur as the implantation proceeds. Thiscanpreventamorphizationevenathighdoses. Despite differences in damage production rates resulting from varying the irradiating ion mass, a critical regime has been observed for different ions at a characteristic transition temperature which also depends on dose rate. This critical regime occurs under conditions where the defect produc- tion rate (influenced by ion flux and mass) and dynamic defect annealing rate (influenced by temperature) are nearly balanced. In the proxim- ity to the critical regime damage accumulation is Computational Materials Science 27 (2003) 1–5 www.elsevier.com/locate/commatsci * Corresponding author. Tel.: +34-983-423683x5502; fax: +34-983-423675. E-mail address: lourdes@ele.uva.es (L. Pelaz). 0927-0256/03/$ - see front matter Ó 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0927-0256(02)00416-0