Formation and Characterization of Periodic Arrays of Nickel Silicide Nanodots on Si(111) Substrates

Abstract

We report here the first study on the formation of two-dimensional (2D) periodic arrays of nickel metal and Ni-silicide nanodots on Si(111) substrates by the colloidal nanosphere lithography (NSL) and thermal annealing techniques. For the Ni metal nanodot array on Si(111) sample after annealing, NiSi 2 appears to form as the first silicide phase at a temperature as low as 250 C. From transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and electron diffraction analyses, the NiSi 2 nanodots were found to grow epitaxially on the Si (111) surface with the crystallographic relationships NiSi 2 [111] k Si[111] and NiSi 2 ð22 20Þ k Sið2 2 20Þ. In the higher temperatures annealed samples, many of the epitaxial NiSi 2 nanodots were observed to have truncated shapes, and the formation of the faceted structures became more pronounced as the annealing temperature increased. The observed results demonstrate that using the colloidal NSL and heat treatment approaches, it is expected that the investigations of the interfacial reactions of various metal nanodot arrays on Si-based substrates can be achieved.

The fabrication of metal silicide nanodot arrays using localized ion implantation

“…Nanodot patterns have demonstrated potential in important applications such as high-density storage devices [1][2][3], nanooptical devices [4][5][6], and integrated circuit devices [7]. For example, island metal nanodot structures can be used to overcome the superparamagnetic limit of magnetic media in storage devices [1].…”