Growth mechanism for solid-phase epitaxy of Si in the Si <100>/Pd2Si/Si(amorphous) system studied by a radioactive tracer technique
- Creators
- Pretorius, R.
- Liau, Z. L.
- Lau, S. S.
- Nicolet, M-A.
Abstract
A tracer technique using radioactive 31Si (T1/2=2.62 h) was used to study solid-phase epitaxial growth (SPEG) of silicon. After depositing Pd and Si onto single-crystal substrates which had been activated in a nuclear reactor, Pd2Si was formed with about equal amounts of radioactive and nonradioactive silicon during heating at 400 °C for 5 min. After a second annealing stage (450 °C-->500 °C in 1 h) the silicide layer which moves to the top of the sample during SPEG was etched off with aqua regia. From the absence of radioactive 31Si in the etchant solution it is concluded that SPEG takes place by dissociation of the Pd2Si layer at the single-crystal interface to provide free Si for epitaxial growth, while new silicide is formed at the interface with the amorphous Si. These results were confirmed by evaporating radioactive silicon onto nonactivated silicon substrates before evaporation of Pd and stable amorphous Si and by measuring the activity in the SPEG sample before and after etching off the silicide layer.
Additional Information
Copyright © 1977 American Institute of Physics (Received 20 September 1976; accepted for publication 10 March 1977) The authors wish to thank Professor V. Guinn and Professor G. Miller for their advice and assistance in the neutron activation of silicon samples in the Triga nuclear reactor at the University of California, Irvine. They would also like to thank Professor D. S. Burnett of the Department of Geochemistry, California Institute of Technology, for the use of his β-counting equipment. J. Mallory is thanked for the skill and care with which he carried out the evaporations. They are also thankful to Professor J. W. Mayer of Caltech and Dr. King-Ning Tu of IBM, Thomas J. Watson Research Center, New York, for numerous fruitful discussions. One of the authors (R.P.) thanks the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research for financial support. Work supported in part by the Office of Naval Research (D. Ferry).Files
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 5415
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:PREjap77
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2006-10-16Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-08Created from EPrint's last_modified field