Metastable doping behavior in antimony-implanted (100) silicon

Abstract
High-dose antimony-implanted (100) silicon has been activated by furnace annealing at temperatures ∼600 °C to achieve active concentrations up to 3×1020 cm−3, an order of magnitude in excess of the equilibrium solubility limit for antimony in silicon. Both channeling and electrical measurements indicate that such doping levels are metastable. Subsequent annealing for longer times at higher temperatures results in a return to near-equilibrium conditions as indicated by a reduction in both the substitutional antimony fraction and the measured active concentration. The observed annealing behavior and deactivation processes for antimony in silicon appear to show important differences from results previously obtained for arsenic in silicon.