  Defect engineering is foundational to classical electronic device development
and for emerging quantum devices. Here, we report on defect engineering of
silicon single crystals with ion pulses from a laser accelerator with ion flux
levels up to 10^22 ions/cm^2/s. Low energy ions from plasma expansion of the
laser-foil target are implanted near the surface and then diffuse into silicon
samples that were locally pre-heated by high energy ions. We observe low energy
ion fluences of ~10^16 cm^-2, about four orders of magnitude higher than the
fluence of high energy (MeV) ions. In the areas of highest energy deposition,
silicon crystals exfoliate from single ion pulses. Color centers, predominantly
W and G-centers, form directly in response to ion pulses without a subsequent
annealing step. We find that the linewidth of G-centers increase in areas with
high ion flux much more than the linewidth of W-centers, consistent with
density functional theory calculations of their electronic structure. Laser ion
acceleration generates aligned pulses of high and low energy ions that expand
the parameter range for defect engineering and doping of semiconductors with
tunable balances of ion flux, damage rates and local heating.
