Ion Implantation-A Technology for Shallow Doping

Amol Purohit1, Kausar Ali2

Department of Electronics and communication
Vivekananad Institute of Technology, Jaipur
1
amolbandhuraj@gmail.com
2
kausarali4u@gmail.com

Abstract— Ion implantation is a material Wide ranges of ion energy and dose are applied.
engineering process by which ions of a material
For ion energy ranging from 1 keV to 10 MeV, the
are accelerated in an electrical field and impacted
on penetration depth varies from 10 nm to 50 µm.
into another solid. This process is used to change
In general, it is difficult to get deeper penetration
the physical, chemical, or electrical properties of
since extremely high energy ions are required.
the solid. Ion implantation is used in Doses ranging from 1010 to 1018 ions/cm2 are
semiconductor device fabrication and in metaltypically applied. For high-dose applications, ion
finishing, as well as various applications insources providing high ion currents are needed to
materials science research. The ions can keep the implantation time reasonable for
introduce both a chemical change in the target, in
production purposes.
that they can introduce a different element thanIon implantation is used extensively in the
the target or induce a nuclear transmutation, and
semiconductor industry. The fabrication of
a structural change, in that the crystal structure of
integrated circuits in silicon often requires many
the target can be damaged or even destroyed by
steps of ion implantation with different ion species
the energetic collision cascades. and energies. Ion implantation is also used to
change the surface properties of metals and alloys.
Keywords— Ion implantation, dopant species, It has been applied successfully to improve wear
ion beam energy, implantation dose, tilt and resistance, fatigue life, corrosion protection, and
twist angle. chemical resistance of different materials.
I. INTRODUCTION II. PRINCIPLE
A process that utilizes accelerated ions to Ion implantation equipment typically consists of
penetrate a solid surface. The implanted ions can be an ion source, where ions of the desired element are
used to modify the surface composition, structure, produced, an accelerator, where the ions are
or property of the solid material. This surface electrostatically accelerated to a high energy, and a
modification depends on the ion species, energy, target chamber, where the ions impinge on a target,
and flux. The penetration depth can be controlled which is the material to be implanted. Thus ion
by adjusting the ion energy and the type of ions implantation is a special case of particle radiation.
used. The total number of ions incorporated into the Each ion is typically a single atom or molecule, and
solid is determined by the ion flux and the duration thus the actual amount of material implanted in the
of implantation. This technique allows for the target is the integral over time of the ion current.
precise placement of ions in a solid at low This amount is called the dose. The currents
temperatures. It is used for many applications such supplied by implanters are typically small (µA), and
as modifying the electrical properties of thus a small amount of dose is implanted in a given
semiconductors and improving the mechanical or time. Therefore, ion implantation finds application
chemical properties of alloys, metals, and in cases where the amount of chemical change
dielectrics. required is small.
Typical ion energies are in the range of 10 to 500
keV (1,600 to 80,000 aJ). Energies in the range 1 to
10 keV (160 to 1,600 aJ) can be used, but result in a • Harwell Freeman ion source
penetration of only a few nanometres or less. • Penning ion source
The energy of the ions, as well as the ion species • Bernas ion source
and the composition of the target determine the • Radio-frequency gas ion source
depth of penetration of the ions in the solid. A • Duoplasmatron ion source
mono-energetic ion beam will generally have a
broad depth distribution. The average penetration Microwave ion source
depth is called the range of the ions. Under typical
circumstances ion ranges will be between 10
nanometres and 1 micrometer.
Ions gradually lose their energy as they travel
through the solid, both from occasional collisions
with target atoms (which cause abrupt energy
transfers) and from a mild drag from overlap of
electron orbitals, which is a continuous process.
The loss of ion energy in the target is called
stopping.
III. ION IMPLANTER TECHNIQUES

Ion implantation has turned out to be the best
suited technique to selectively introduce dopants
into semiconductor materials. To perform ion
implantation a focused ion beam containing just one
particle species (atom, molecule or atom cluster)
with a well defined energy is required. Ionized
particles are used because they can be easily
accelerated and there is an efficient way for the
separation of ionized particle species.
Figure 1.1: Schematic of a Harwell Freeman ion source.
The ion beam which leaves the particle source is
divergent. It is focused by an electric or magnetic
field lens to avoid ion loss to the wall of the beam
line and to ensure that the ion beam reaches the
wafer in a reasonably well defined focus. After
leaving the ion source the beam contains a lot of
atom and molecule species in several charge states.

The ions are generated in an ion source which

consists of an oven where the particles are
vaporized, and the arc chamber, where the particles
are ionized mainly by the bombardment of the
atoms or molecules with electrons but also by
atom/atom and atom/molecule collisions. Due to a
well designed magnetic field in the arc chamber,
which increases the path length of the electrons, and
by the external generation of electrons, the
electron/atom collision probability is increased,
enabling a larger ion density. Figure. 1.1 shows an
example of an ion source, a schematic description
Fig
of a Harwell Freeman ion source. ure 1.2: Schematic of a Ion Implanter.

There are various types of ion sources differing The desired dopant is separated from the
in the design of the arc chamber and in the electron remaining elements by an analyzing magnet.
generation method. Thereby it is made use of the physical effect that
charged particles trace circular orbits with a radius
proportional to the ratio of the mass and the charge, semiconductor. For p-type doping mainly boron and
when passing through a uniform magnetic field. An indium are used while the preferred species for n-
initial beam containing various particle species can type doping are phosphorus, arsenic and antimony.
thereby be split into several single species beams The implantation of nitrogen is used to influence
with different beam directions, so that a small the diffusion behavior of boron in silicon dioxide
aperture placed behind the analyzing magnet can and polysilicon.
absorb all but one particle species. The remaining
ions are accelerated to the required energy, before The impurities are implanted by single atomic
they reach the process chamber where one or ion beams or by molecular ion beams, which
several wafers are located. facilitate shallower doping profiles. The
disadvantage of the molecular ion implantation is
Due to the fact that the area covered by the ion that additional impurities are introduced. The most
beam has a size of typically some cm2 the beam has widely used molecular species are BF2 and recently
to be scanned across the wafer to guarantee a also B10H14 for the implantation of boron and N2 for
uniform implantation dose for the whole wafer the implantation of nitrogen.
which has a diameter of up to 300 mm. Electrostatic
beam scanning, magnetic beam scanning, linear 2. Ion beam energy
mechanical beam scanning, spinning disk
techniques or a combination of these techniques are The penetration depth of the implanted particles
applied. Even if electrostatic or magnetic beam is mainly determined by the ion energy. The typical
scanning are technically less complicated they energy range used in semiconductor technology is
usually suffer from the problem that the angle of 100 eV for shallow doping used for instance for
incidence of the ion beam (tilt angle) on the wafer gate profiling to 200 keV used for the well
varies across the wafer up to some degrees. This formation in MOS technology. Higher energies
results in non-uniform doping profiles across the (200 keV - 1.5 MeV) are required for some low
wafer, because the penetration depth of the ions is dose applications like retrograde wells and very
very sensitive to the tilt angle. Recently high energy implantations (several MeV) are
electrostatic scanning systems have be developed sometimes used for the generation of triple wells or
which compensate these tilt angle variations. high dose buried layers. The ion energy is a very
well controllable parameter. A modern implanter
IV. ION IMPLANTATION PROCESS PARAMETERS guarantees a deviation below 1%.

An ion implantation process is mainly 3. Implantation Dose

determined by five process parameters.
The implantation dose determines the number
• Dopant species of ions which hit the implantation target. It is
• Ion beam energy measured by counting the electrons that are
• Implantation dose necessary to neutralize the charge on the wafer
• Tilt and twist angle introduced by the positively charged ions.
1. Dopant Species:- A critical parameter for the definition of the
implantation dose is the implant area, because the
In modern semiconductor technology several dose is defined as concentration per area.
impurity species with different applications are
used. The most important ones are atoms of the
third and the fifth group of the periodic table. They
are used to generate positively (p-type) or
negatively (n-type) doped regions in the
 4. Tilt and Twist Angle wherein a buried high dose oxygen implant is
converted to silicon oxide by a high temperature
The angle between the wafer surface normal annealing process.
and the ion beam is the tilt angle. A non zero tilt
angle is used to avoid channeling effects in Mesotaxy- Mesotaxy is the term for the growth of a
crystalline silicon, to introduce dopants into the crystallographically matching phase underneath the
sidewalls of a trench large tilt angel is required. surface of the host crystal (compare to epitaxy,
which is the growth of the matching phase on the
Additionally the twist angle is necessary to surface of a substrate). In this process, ions are
completely describe the direction of incidence of implanted at a high enough energy and dose into a
the ion beam. It is the angle between the plane material to create a layer of a second phase, and the
containing the ion beam and the wafer normal, and temperature is controlled so that the crystal
the plane perpendicular to the primary flat of the structure of the target is not destroyed. The crystal
wafer containing the wafer normal (Fig. 1.3). orientation of the layer can be engineered to match
that of the target, even though the exact crystal
structure and lattice constant may be very different.

Ion beam mixing- Ion implantation can be used to

achieve ion beam mixing, i.e. mixing up atoms of
different elements at an interface. This may be
useful for achieving graded interfaces or
strengthening adhesion between layers of
immiscible materials.

Steel Toughening-Nitrogen or other ions can be

implanted into a steel target (drill bits). The
structural change caused by the implantation
Figure 1.3: Definition of the tilt and the twist angle of the ion beam
(blue). produces a surface compression in the steel, which
prevents crack propagation and thus makes the
material more resistant to fracture. The chemical
change can also make the steel more resistant to
V. APPLICATIONS corrosion.

Doping- The introduction of dopants in a
semiconductor is the most common application of
ion implantation. Dopant ions such as boron,
phosphorus or arsenic are generally created from a
gas source, so that the purity of the source can be
very high. These gases tend to be very hazardous.
When implanted in a semiconductor, each dopant
atom can create a charge carrier in the
semiconductor after annealing. The charge carrier
modifies the conductivity of the semiconductor.
Surface finishing- For artificial joints, it is desired
to have surfaces very resistant to both chemical
corrosion and wear due to friction. Ion
implantation is used to make the surfaces more
reliable performance. As in the case of steel, the
surface modification caused by ion implantation
includes both a surface compression which
prevents crack propagation and an alloying of the
surface to make it more chemically resistant to
corrosion.

Silicon on insulator- One prominent method for VI. PROBLEMS

preparing silicon on insulator (SOI) substrates
from conventional silicon substrates is the SIMOX Crystallographic damage- Each individual ion p
(Separation by IMplantation of OXygen) process, whichroduces many point defects in the target
crystal on impact such as vacancies and
interstitials. Vacancies are crystal lattice points
unoccupied by an atom: in this case the ion
collides with a target atom, resulting in transfer of
a significant amount of energy to the target atom
such that it leaves its crystal site. This target atom
then itself becomes a projectile in the solid, and
can cause successive collision events. Interstitials
result when such atoms (or the original ion itself)
come to rest in the solid, but find no vacant space
in the lattice to reside. These point defects can
migrate and cluster with each other, resulting in
dislocation loops and other defects.
Damage Recovery- Because ion implantation
causes damage to the crystal structure of the target
which is often unwanted, ion implantation
processing is often followed by a thermal
annealing. This can be referred to as damage
recovery.
Amorphization- The amount of crystallographic
damage can be enough to completely amorphize
the surface of the target: i.e. it can become an
amorphous solid (such a solid produced from a
melt is called a glass). In some cases, complete
amorphization of a target is preferable to a highly
defective crystal: An amorphized film can be
regrown at a lower temperature than required to
anneal a highly damaged crystal.
Sputtering- Some of the collision events result in
atoms being ejected (sputtered) from the surface,
and thus ion implantation will slowly etch away a
surface. The effect is only appreciable for very
large doses.
VII. CONCLUSIONS
Ion implantation is a surface modification
technique by which shallow doping is achieved at
low temperature in controlling and reliable manner.
But ion implantation is not suitable for changing the
entire bulk property of a solid. The penetration
depth in solid depends upon the ion energy of the
ion being implanted on surface of the solid, ion
species and composition of the solid.
REFERENCES
[1] VLSI Fabrication Principles by Sorab K
Gandhi, Wiley India pvt ltd, third edition.
[2] Review paper, Elements of Clean-room
Technology and Contamination Control by J.C.
Kapoor and Meenakshi Gupta.
[3] http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/phd/hoessinger/
diss_html.html, Simulation of Ion Implantation
for ULSI Technology
[4] E. Rimini, Ion Implantation: Basics to
Device Fabrication, Kluwer, Boston, 1995.
[5] S.M. Sze, Physics of Semiconductor
Devices,
Wiley, New York, second ed., 1981.

Ion channelling- If there is a crystallographic

structure to the target, and especially in
semiconductor substrates where the crystal
structure is more open, particular crystallographic
directions offer much lower stopping than other
directions. The result is that the range of an ion can
be much longer if the ion travels exactly along a
particular direction. This effect is called ion
channelling, and it is highly nonlinear, resulting in
extreme differences in implantation depth.