Gettering of metals to nanocavities in silicon

Nanocavities, produced by high dose hydrogen implantation and subsequent annealing in silicon, have been found to provide favourable sites for the gettering of a range of metallic impurities. In this work, the gettering of high concentrations of Au and Cu to cavities is illustrated. In addition, it is shown that low concentrations of Cu (well below the solid solubility limit in silicon) can also be very efficiently gettered to nanocavities.