Bonding And Diffusion Of Nitrogen In The Insbn Alloys Fabricated By Two-Step Ion Implantation

We report bonding and diffusion behavior of nitrogen incorporated into InSb wafer by two-step implantation. Three nitrogen-containing regions, i.e., a surface accumulation region, a uniform region, and a tail region, were observed in the samples after post annealing. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements at different depths reveal that majority of the nitrogen forms In-N bonds in the uniform region but exists as interstitial defects in the tail region. The diffusion coefficients of nitrogen in InSb were obtained by fitting the modified Fick's law with experimental data and the activation energy of 0.55 +/- 0.04 eV extracted confirms the interstitial dominating diffusion of nitrogen in the InSb wafer. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4734507]