Effect of a high-energy proton-irradiation dose on the electron mobility in <Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis>-Si crystals

n-Si single crystals produced by the floating zone method are studied. The concentration of electrons in the crystals is 6 × 10¹³ cm⁻³. The samples are irradiated with 25-MeV protons at 300 K. The irradiation dose is varied in the range (1.8–8.1) × 10¹² cm⁻². The measurements are carried out by means of the Hall technique in the range of temperatures T = 77−300 K. In samples irradiated with different proton doses, a sharp increase in the experimental effective Hall mobility μ_eff or a deep minimum in the dependence μ_eff(T) in the region of phonon scattering of electrons is observed immediately after irradiation or after aging of the samples, respectively. The observed effect is attributed to the formation of high-conductivity (metal-like) inclusions in the irradiated samples and to changes in the degree of screening of the inclusions by impurity-defect shells in relation to the irradiation dose, the time of natural aging, and the temperature of measurements. The impurity-defect shells are formed around metal-like inclusions during isochronal annealing or natural aging of the irradiated samples. It is suggested that metal-like inclusions formed in the n-Si crystals on irradiation with protons with the energy 25 MeV are atomic nanoclusters with an 80-nm radius.