With the need to introduce new materials and processes to the semiconductor fabrication process, there is a great need to understand the diffusion of a large number of elements in silicon. To this end, a systematic SIMS study was done for implanted elements with subsequent annealing. There is a surprising lack of earlier work on many of the elements of the periodic table and the work that was done did not involve the additional effects of ion implantation.
The recent SIMS results allow the diffusion of the many elements to be categorized into several groups. These effects range from elements that do not appear to move substantially upon annealing, rapid diffusion to the surface, and formation of various peaks in the concentration profile.
Based on the SIMS results, we have used TEM to study the microstructure and composition of subset of the implants. The figure below shows the SIMS and TEM results for a Chromium implant.