The rare earth (RE) doping of III-V compounds and Si is currently of interest due to the potential development of these materials for LED's and electrically injected lasers which operate in the near infrared (1-3 pm). Er and Yb have been studied extensively, and have been incorporated into semiconductor hosts either during growth or by subsequent implantation. Implantation is of interest because of the greater degree of flexibility it affords for device fabrication in an integrated format. The use of conventional implantation energies is hampered by the large mass of the rare earths which restricts the range and creates a high density of displacement damage. In this paper, we discuss the use of MeV implantation for the incorporation of Er in Si. Rutherford backscattering (RBS), photoluminescence (PL) and electrical measurements have been carried out on Si substrates implanted with Er at MeV energies. The RBS data show that 1E13cm^-2 1 MeV implants do not produce a distinct damage peak and are well annealed by a 2 900°C 30 min anneal. They also show that MeV implants of 2.5E14cm^-2 produce a thick amor-phous layer while 5E13cm-implants result in a damage peak which is 50% of the random. A characteristic 806 meV Er PL peak is present in all the samples annealed at 700°C or higher. The integrated Er PL intensity is found to decrease with increasing anneal temperature, and may be related to interstitial Er³⁺. All samples annealed at 650°C or higher also show an n-type layer associated with the implanted Er. The carrier concentration is a maximum for 700°C anneals and decreases monotonically for higher anneal temperatures.

Date Published: 9 April 1985
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 0530, Advanced Applications of Ion Implantation, (9 April 1985); doi: 10.1117/12.946487

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 0530:
Advanced Applications of Ion Implantation
Michael I. Current; Devindra K. Sadana, Editor(s)