The gettering efficiency of copper and platinum by cavities formed in silicon after high dose helium implantation and thermal processing has been investigated. The formation of helium bubbles and their evolution into cavities has been investigated by transmission electron microscopy; the measured values of void density, diameter and the width of the void layer can be interpreted by assuming a simple coalescence model. Metal impurities intentionally introduced in silicon by ion implantation are efficiently gettered inside these cavities, probably due to the large amount of unsatured bonds at the void internal surface. Processing at temperatures higher than 1000oC causes a release of the trapped metal atoms which can be gettered again by repeating the process. The method is demonstrated on real devices such as large area diodes (a particle detector) and bipolar transistors. The capability to localize in depth and across the wafer surface on the gettering sites allows the development of a new gettering engineering.

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In this work, we propose a methodology to synthesize metallic nanoparticles on textured Fluorine Tin Oxide (FTO) surface by laser irradiations of deposited Au films. In particular, the breakup of the Au films into nanoparticles (NPs) is observed as a consequence of the melting and solidification processes induced by laser irradiations. The mean Au NPs size and surface density evolution are analyzed as a function of the laser fluence. Optical characterizations of the glass/FTO/Au NPs multilayer show, in the absorption spectra, plasmonic peaks due to the Au NPs and an improvement of the light absorption efficiency from the sample with larger Au NPs. The simulated trends of the ratio between the scattering and absorption cross section suggest that the absorption efficiency dominates over the scattering efficiency in the spectral range between 200 and 600 nm. The simulation shows that, by varying the NPs radius from about 18 to 24 nm, the radiation-scattered intensity remains symmetric in forward and reverse directions. These results indicate that the surface coverage size distribution of Au NPs is the key parameter to correlate the structural and optical properties of the glass/FTO/Au NPs multilayer. Furthermore, electrical characterizations highlight a reduction in the sheet resistance of the textured FTO due to the presence of the NPs. We compare these results with those obtained for the same systems when standard furnace annealing processes are used to obtain the Au NPs on the textured FTO surface.

The interaction between high-energy ion irradiation and pre-existing damage clusters dispersed in single-crystal Si is discussed. Silicon substrates were predamaged by low-dose 150 keV Au ions. Post-irradiation by 600 keV Kr2+ ions resulted in either damage annealing or damage accumulation, depending on the substrate temperature. The transition temperature between these two different regimes is 420 K. These data are discussed and compared with the ion beam induced epitaxy and amorphization of continuous surface amorphous layers.

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