The process of ion implantation often involves vacancy generation and migration. The vacancy generation and migration near a monocrystalline silicon surface during three kinds of energetic Si₃₅ cluster ion implantations were investigated by molecular dynamics simulations in the present work. The patterns of vacancy generation and migration, as well as the implantation-induced amorphous structure, were analyzed according to radial distribution function, Wigner–Seitz cell, and identify diamond structure analytical methods. A lot of vacancies rapidly generate and migrate in primary directions and form an amorphous structure in the first two picoseconds. The cluster with higher incident kinetic energy can induce the generation and migration of more vacancies and a deeper amorphous structure. Moreover, boundaries have a loading–unloading effect, where interstitial atoms load into the boundary, which then acts as a source, emitting interstitial atoms to the target and inducing the generation of vacancies again. These results provide more insight into doping silicon via ion implantation.

Silicon, as the basic material of biochips and electronic devices, is often exposed to irradiation environments, and its radiation resistance has attracted much attention in recent decades. We calculated collision cascade in a silicon-based device under energetic Ar ions irradiation by using Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics simulations. The difference in vacancy probability density under different energetic incident ion irradiation is caused by the penetrating power and the straggling power of incident ions. The kinetic energy of an incident ion determines the size of local collision cascade density; a high energy incident ion can induce greater local collision cascade density. The efficiency of transferring energy from incident ions to target electrons at the silicon surface is more than in silicon, and the recoil atoms dissipate most of their energy at the lattice sites where they are stopping. These results provide more insight into the radiation resistance of silicon-based devices.