Conventional B+ or BF2+implantation has a limitation in terms of throughput and energy contamination. Boron cluster implantation is one alternative to solve this problem. We have investigated the characteristics of B18HX+ cluster ion implantation using p+ poly-Si gated MOS capacitors. The B18HX+ cluster was implanted to n+ poly-Si in order to convert to p+ poly-Si with energy of 2.5keV and dose of 1.6E16 ∼ 2.0E16 ions/cm2 The improvement in the inversion capacitance (more then 3%) was observed in the case of cluster ion implantation. This result indicates less poly-silicon depletion effect. It was verified by TDS and SIMS that the hydrogen level of the by p+ poly-Si gate implanted by the cluster ions, and then annealed, was similar to that of a sample implanted by conventional B+ ions. Thus, boron cluster implantation was proven to be more beneficial than the conventional B+ implantation for the capacitor performance. © 2006 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]