GISAXS study of structural relaxation in amorphous silicon

The structural changes induced in single crystal silicon implanted with silicon ions above the amorphisation threshold were studied by Grazing Incidence Small Angle X-ray Scattering technique. Silicon samples were implanted with silicon ions at 30 keV to the dose of 5 x 10(15) atoms/cm(2). A well-defined layer of amorphous silicon, thick about 40 nm was formed below the surface. As implanted samples were subsequently relaxed by thermal annealing at 350 degreesC. The analysis have shown that the amorphous layer exhibits a granular structure that develops with annealing. A model will be presented for the film structure changes obtained by data evaluation based on the distorted wave Born approximation. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.