A study of amorphization energies in silicon for different implantation parameters

Damage profiles were obtained from α-particle channeling spectra of Si〈1 1 1〉 samples implanted with different fluences of 200 keV carbon and 350 keV argon ions at liquid nitrogen temperature. Critical damage energies were extracted by comparing the experimentally determined boundary positions of amorphized zones with elastic energy transfer densities obtained from TRIM simulations. A similar analysis was also done of previously published damage profiles of 2 MeV self-ion implantations. Plotting the obtained amorphization energies as a function of inelastic energy densities transferred to the silicon lattice yield incompatible results for these three ion species. The reasons for the observed discrepancies are most probably erroneous silicon stopping powers employed by the TRIM code.