Diffusion of ion implanted indium and silver in ZnO crystals

Abstract

We report on diffusion behavior for ion implanted indium and silver atoms in ZnO crystals. Both In and Ag ions were implanted at room temperature at 7-10° relative to c-axis to avoid channeling effects during implantation. In ions were implanted at four different energies (40, 100, 200, and 350 keV, respectively) and doses (4.20×1013, 6.70×1013, 8.10×1013 and 3.10×1014 /cm2, respectively), resulting in a total dose of 5 ×1014 /cm2. For another set of ZnO samples, Ag ions were implanted at energies 30, 75, 150, and 350 keV at doses 3.3×1013, 4.2×1013, 8.3×1013 and 3.4×1014 /cm2, respectively, to reach a total dose of 5×1014 /cm2. Both In and Ag implants resulted in a uniform concentration profile of the implanted dopants from surface to depth ~ 150 nm. The samples were annealed for 30 minutes at temperatures between 850-1050 °C in an oxygen gas flow. The distributions of In and Ag atoms, either aligned or nonaligned along the crystalline directions, were measured by Rutherford backscattering combined with ion channeling. The diffusivities for nonaligned (interstitial) and aligned (substitutional) dopants atoms were determined to vary with annealing temperature via the Arrhenius relationship. The diffusion activation energies (Ea) along the <10-11> direction for substitutional impurity atoms were lower than those for interstitial dopants atoms e.g., in the case of In, Ea ~ 1.52 eV for <10-11> aligned In atoms and Ea ~ 2.61 eV for interstitial In atoms between <10-11> atomic rows and in the case of Ag, Ea ~ 1.77 eV for the interstitial Ag atoms between the <10-11> atomic rows and 1.11 eV for <10-11> aligned Ag atoms. The diffusion activation energies showed a different trend for the two dopants as measured along the <0001> crystalline direction. For Ag implanted in ZnO, the activation energy of Ea ~ 0.91 eV for the aligned Ag atoms along <0001> direction and Ea ~ 1.55 eV were found for the interstitial Ag atoms, whereas in the case of In along the <0001> direction, the interstitial In was found to migrate with a higher activation energy (Ea ~ 1.78 eV) than the substitutional In (Ea ~1.42 eV). These results will be compared with first-principle calculations for understanding the energetics of defect formation and migration in both n- and p-type doping cases.

Silver migration and trapping in ion implanted ZnO single crystals

“…Finally, it should be mentioned that Yaqoob and Huang 29 addressed the diffusion of Ag (and In) in ionimplanted ZnO samples by monitoring the redistribution of Ag in the implantation peak region using Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS) measurements. Consistent with our data, they found a complex interaction between the Ag atoms and the implantation-induced defects.…”

“…It was concluded in Ref. 29 that a more detailed study is required to understand the atomistic processes occurring in the implantation peak region.…”