Single Ion Implantation and Deterministic Doping

Abstract

The presence of single atoms, e.g. dopant atoms, in sub-100 nm scale electronic devices can affect the device characteristics, such as the threshold voltage of transistors, or the sub-threshold currents. Fluctuations of the number of dopant atoms thus poses a complication for transistor scaling. In a complementary view, new opportunities emerge when novel functionality can be implemented in devices deterministically doped with single atoms. The grand price of the latter might be a large scale quantum computer, where quantum bits (qubits) are encoded e.g. in the spin states of electrons and nuclei of single dopant atoms in silicon, or in color centers in diamond. Both the possible detrimental effects of dopant fluctuations and single atom device ideas motivate the development of reliable single atom doping techniques which are the subject of this chapter. Single atom doping can be approached with top down and bottom up techniques. Top down refers to the placement of dopant atoms into a more or less structured matrix environment, like a transistor in silicon. Bottom up refers to approaches to introduce single dopant atoms during the growth of the host matrix e.g. by directed self-assembly and scanning probe assisted lithography. Bottom up approaches are discussed in Chapter XYZ. Since the late 1960's, ion implantation has been a widely used technique to introduce dopant atoms into silicon and other materials in order to modify their electronic properties. It works particularly well in silicon since the damage to the crystal lattice that is induced by ion implantation can be repaired by thermal annealing. In addition, the introduced dopant atoms can be incorporated with high efficiency into lattice position in the silicon host crystal which makes them electrically active. This is not the case for e.g. diamond, which makes ion implantation doping to engineer the electrical properties of diamond, especially for n-type doping much harder then for silicon. Ion implantation is usually a highly statistical process, where high fluences of energetic ions, ranging from {approx}10{sup 9} to >10{sup 16} cm{sup -2} are implanted. For single atom device development, control over the absolute number of ions is needed and ions have to be placed with high spatial resolution. In the following sections we will discuss a series of approaches to single ion implantation with regard to single ion impact sensing and control of single ion positioning.