Electrical, structural, and bonding changes induced in silicon by H, Ar, and Kr ion-beam etching

Abstract

A study to elucidate the role of processing-induced changes in Si, subjected to ion-beam etching has been made. It is shown that these changes can be related to the primary ion beam used in ion-beam etching. Using ESR, trivalently bonded Si has been shown to be present. Fe and Cr have been found to be the main contaminants. An annealing study revealed that the damage can be annealed out at relatively high temperatures.

Influence of plasma gas and postcleaning on the electrical characteristics of plasma-exposed Al/n-Si Schottky diodes

“…This result agrees with those obtained by Fonash et al 2,10 The ion bombardment of the Si surface by inert gas leads to formation of donorlike defects such as trivalently bonded Si atoms. Positive charges present in the defects bring about an increase in the downward bending of the Si band edges adjacent to the surface.…”

“…For H 2 plasma exposure, an a-Si:H film with very large resistivity was presumably formed. 2 The postcleaning treatment was carried out in order to remove the damage layer and/or the insulating film formed during plasma exposure. The first HF dipping removes a natural oxide or an insulating film on the Si surface.…”

“…1 There have been many studies on the influence of the ion bombardment of silicon on electrical properties. [2][3][4][5][6] For that purpose, the electrical characteristics were examined for samples that were ion bombarded, just followed by metal deposition. However, in practical device fabrication, some cleaning ͑postcleaning͒ treatments have been carried out immediately after the dry processing.…”

THz emission from argon implanted silicon surfaces

“…Experiments made with photoconductive antennas and metal semiconductor contacts based on GaAs demonstrated that an increase in the strength of the electric field leads to an enhanced THz emission (). Furthermore it is widely known that ion and electron beam induced deep defects lead to a shift of the Fermi level toward the middle of the bandgap due to majority carrier trapping . Increasing the defect density will result in an enhanced shift until—when the defect concentration comes close to the majority carrier density—Fermi level pinning at the defect energy level occurs.…”

Atomic force microscopy and high-resolution RBS investigation of the surface modification of magnetron sputter-etched Si(111) in an argon plasma at different pressures

“…However, the pressure dependence of Schottky barrier modification reveals that metallic impurity contamination is not responsible for the degraded rectifying properties of Schottky diodes fabricated on sputter-etched n-Si. In studying the electrical, structural and bonding changes induced in Si by low-energy H, Ar and Kr ion beam etching, Singh et al 35 observed that Fe and Cr from their gas sources were the main impurity contaminants. They showed further that the rectifying qualities of SBDs fabricated on ion beam-etched Si were not metal impurity-related but were rather determined by intrinsic defects.…”