Growth of β-FeSi2 on Si(111) by chemical beam epitaxy

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Abstract
The growth of high quality semiconducting β‐FeSi2 layers on silicon substrates is rather difficult due to a large lattice mismatch [up to ∼5.5% on Si(111)] and very different crystallographic structure (orthorhombic structure on top of the diamond one). We report on a new method using the chemical beam epitaxy (CBE) technique to stabilize at first the tetragonal α‐FeSi2 phase (lattice mismatch ∼0.8% on Si(111)) at ∼550 °C. Then a post‐annealing up to ∼650 °C induces a phase transition from the α to β phase via a tremendous coalescence of numerous small metallic α grains (∼200 Å width) into large semiconducting β‐grains (≤1 μm width) of high quality, suitable for Si integrated optoelectronic technology.