Abstract
The effects of the presence of surface oxides and oxygen incorporated in deposited Ni films on intermixing and compounding at Ni/GaAs (100) interfaces were investigated with Auger sputter profile analysis. The Ni/GaAs structures were heated in vacuum with a high-intensity incoherent lamp. Chemical changes and compound distributions were extracted from profile data by factor analysis of the Auger peaks. Diffusion coefficients for Ni at different temperatures were obtained from profile concentration gradients. The results showed that the activation energy for Ni diffusion in GaAs was about 0.2 eV higher when oxygen contaminated the Ni/GaAs interface. The presence of interfacial oxygen was also shown to inhibit compound formation, such as Ni2GaAs.

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