Crystalline silicon samples were implanted at room temperature with 1.55MeV 3He ions at different doses ranging from 5 × 1015 to 5 × 1016 /cm2. Damage production after subsequent high temperature annealing was studied by using cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (XTEM). Meanwhile
nuclear reaction analysis (NRA) was used to study the behavior of 3He desorption from the implanted samples. Our results show that at low dose range
the He implantation followed by high temperature annealing only induces the creation of small dislocations
and at intermediate dose range
clusters of bubbles accompanied with high density of dislocation loops were observed
while for the higher implanted dose
a well defined cavity band was formed at the depth corresponding to the projected 3He range. The phenomena were discussed in combination with NRA results.