Advantage of rapid thermal annealing over furnace annealing for P-implanted metastable Si/Ge_0.12Si_0.88

Metastable pseudomorphic Ge_0.12Si_0.88 films were grown by molecular beam epitaxy on Si(100) substrates and then implanted with 100 keV ³¹P at room temperature for a dose of 5×10¹³/cm². Samples were subsequently annealed by rapid thermal annealing (RTA) in nitrogen and by steady-state furnace annealing in vacuum. Both damage and strain introduced by implantation can be completely removed, within instrumental sensitivity, by RTA at 700°C for 10-40 s. Vacuum annealing for 30 min at 500-550°C removes most of the damage and strain induced by the implantation but the activation of the P is poor. At 700°C, the activation is nearly 100%, but the crystallinity worsens and the pseudomorphic strain begins to relax. We conclude that for a lightly implanted metastable and pseudomorphic GeSi epilayer on Si, steady-state vacuum annealing cannot achieve good dopant activation without introducing significant strain relaxation to the heterostructure, while RTA can.