Blistering and layer transfer of hydrogen implanted crystals

An attempt was made to investigate the basic physical mechanisms involved in the recently discovered method of thin crystalline film transfer using hydrogen ion implantation. The approach used in this work was to study the more general phenomenon of surface blistering of hydrogen implanted crystals.;Blistering kinetics was studied by measuring the time required to observe the onset of surface blisters as a function of H dose and annealing temperature for Si(100), Si(111), Ge(100) and 6H-SiC(0001). The results show that the measured blistering activation energy (EA) was dose-dependent for Si and independent of crystalline orientation. The measured EA was slightly dose-dependent for Ge and independent of dose for SiC. The physical origin of the activation energy is claimed to be the rupture of the host-lattice bonds at the rim of the advancing microcracks.;The distribution of the implanted hydrogen within these materials was studied using the 1H(15N,alphagamma) 12C resonant nuclear reaction. The results of this study indicate that the as-implanted (ASI) Si had a significant amount of H trapped in a narrow region near the damage peak. This was attributed to H 2 formation within platelet defects in that region. The absence of any significant H peaking in the ASI Ge or SiC was claimed to be due to H being less mobile in these materials. Hydrogen profiling performed on annealed samples indicated that most of the H is retained during annealing and concentrates at the rear of the ASI distribution.