Our previous work has concentrated on the recrystallisation of amorpho
us silicon with temperature and we used XAFS to follow the local order
of the dopants (typically As, Ga, etc) to see them change from essent
ially 3-fold in the amorphous state to 4-fold in the crystalline state
. The main findings were that the silicon matrix recovers before the d
opants can adjust their coordination numbers to the crystalline requir
ements. We present here investigations in the reverse process, namely,
the progressive amorphisation of the crystalline matrix by ion bombar
dment. We show the progressive transformation of the dopants local str
ucture as the matrix amorphises and show there is no delay in the stru
ctural rearrangement.