Erbium silicide formation using a line-source electron beam
- 15 April 1984
- journal article
- research article
- Published by AIP Publishing in Applied Physics Letters
- Vol. 44 (8) , 747-749
- https://doi.org/10.1063/1.94903
Abstract
Rare-earth silicide layers typically are heavily pitted when formed by furnace reaction of thin metal films with a silicon substrate. We show that this phenomenon can be explained by an inhibiting contamination layer which has a high activation energy for dissolution relative to that for silicide growth. Very smooth erbium silicide growth has been demonstrated by reacting the layers at much higher temperatures (1100–1300 K) for 200–500 μs, using electron beam heating. A novel combination of controlled electron beam heating, ion beam analysis, and computational simulation has been used to determine an activation energy for interface barrier dissolution of 3.7±0.3 eV.Keywords
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