In situ growth and coalescence of He-filled bi-dimensional defects in Si by H supply

In this work, ion implantations with in situ transmission electron microscopy observations followed by different rates of temperature ramp were performed in (001)-Si to follow the evolution of He-plates under the influence of hydrogen. The JANNUS and MIAMI facilities were used to study the first stages of growth as well as the interactions between co-planar plates. Results showed that under a limited amount of H, the growth of He-plates resulting from a subcritical stress-corrosion mechanism can be fully described by the kinetic model of Johnson-Mehl-Avrami-Kolmogorov with effective activation energy of 0.9 eV. Elastic calculations showed that the sudden and non-isotropic coalescence of close He-plates occurs when the out-of-plane tensile stress between them is close to the yield strength of silicon. After hydrogen absorption, surface minimization of final structure occurs.