Effect of energetic ions on the stability of bond-center hydrogen in silicon

We report an observation of low-temperature, athermal, ion-induced decay of infrared-active bond-center hydrogen (BCH) in silicon. Specifically, the infrared intensity of BCH is found to decay monotonically as a function of ion dose with a decay constant determined by the electronic energy deposited by each ion. Our data indicate that ion-induced decay of BCH results in a different final configuration when compared to the thermal decay process. These findings provide insight into the structure and stability of hydrogen related defects in silicon, and thus have implications for the reliability of state-of-the-art semiconductor devices, radiation damage, and ion-beam characterization studies of hydrogen containing solids.