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Oxygen-deficient oxide growth by subliming the oxide source material: The cause of silicide formation in rare earth oxides on silicon
2013, Bierwagen, O., Proessdorf, A., Niehle, M., Grosse, F., Trampert, A., Klingsporn, M.
The fundamental issue of oxygen stoichiometry in oxide thin film growth by subliming the source oxide is investigated by varying the additionally supplied oxygen during molecular beam epitaxy of RE2O3 (RE = Gd, La, Lu) thin films on Si(111). Supplying additional oxygen throughout the entire growth was found to prevent the formation of rare earth silicides observed in films grown without an oxygen source. Postgrowth vacuum annealing of oxygen stoichiometric films did not lead to silicide formation thereby confirming that the silicides do not form as a result of an interface instability at growth temperature in vacuum but rather due to an oxygen deficiency in the source vapor. The average oxygen deficiency of the rare-earth containing species in the source vapor was quantified by the 18O tracer technique and correlated with that of the source material, which gradually decomposed during sublimation. Therefore, any oxide growth by sublimation of the oxide source material requires additional oxygen to realize oxygen stoichiometric films.
Investigation of the copper gettering mechanism of oxide precipitates in silicon
2015, Kissinger, G., Kot, D., Klingsporn, M., Schubert, M.A., Sattler, A., Müller, T.
One of the reasons why the principal gettering mechanism of copper at oxide precipitates is not yet clarified is that it was not possible to identify the presence and measure the copper concentration in the vicinity of oxide precipitates. To overcome the problem we used a 14.5 nm thick thermal oxide layer as a model system for an oxide precipitate to localize the place where the copper is collected. We also analyzed a plate-like oxide precipitate by EDX and EELS and compared the results with the analysis carried out on the oxide layer. It is demonstrated that both the interface between the oxide precipitate being SiO2 and the silicon matrix and the interface between the thermal oxide and silicon consist of a 2–3 nm thick SiO layer. As the results of these experiments also show that copper segregates at the SiO interface layer of the thermal oxide it is concluded that gettering of copper by oxide precipitates is based on segregation of copper to the SiO interface layer.