Improving radiation tolerance with room temperature annealing of pre-existing defects

Pre-existing defects in semiconductor devices can act as nucleation sites for radiation damage. Defects generated from mismatches in lattice constant, stiffness and thermal expansion are difficult to eliminate with thermal annealing. We propose a non-thermal stimulus, the electron wind force, to reduce the pre-existing defect concentration in Zener diodes at room temperature in a minute. The pristine and pre-annealed diodes were exposed to 11 MeV Au³⁺ ions at different fluences to induce damage levels of 0.2, 2, 10 and 20 displacement per atom (dpa). Post irradiation characterization showed up to 10 times improvement in radiation tolerance in the pre-annealed devices.