Wedge etching by anodic oxidation and determination of shallow boron profile by ion beam analysis

Shallow boron implantation is a widely used step in the Si technology. Boron being a light element, standard RBS and channeling is hardly used for investigating its depth distribution and lattice location after implantation and subsequent annealing. An old idea, the pulled anodic oxidation is applied to create bevelled sample surface in order to explore the implanted boron profile. Detailed description of the special sample preparation method is given. RBS and channeling studies in combination with the 11B(p,α)8Be nuclear reaction at around 660 keV were used to measure the total boron concentration step-by-step both on random direction and channeled samples. Boron profiles extracted from step-by-step nuclear reaction measurements is presented.