Nature of the Schottky term in the Schottky barrier

Formation of the Si/Cu interface

“…On the other hand, the stability and homogeneity of this phase suggest that the real composition could rather be the eutectic Cu 3 Si, as has been reported also in other works. 4,7 Consequently, on analysing the Si and Cu Auger spectra we conclude that from a film thickness of ¾2Å (first arriving Si atoms) to ¾20Å, a reacted interface or alloy-like phase is formed.…”

“…1. 4,7 This suggests that the kind of bonding in both interfaces should be the same. Furthermore, they have reported a thickness of the reacted layer of ¾30-40Å, as evidenced by AES 4 and depth profile 5 studies.…”

“…Interestingly, in Ref. 7 the authors find that the Si-on-Cu interface is much narrower than the Cu-on-Si interface (100 vs. 9Å, respectively). Although the trend is the same (Si-on-Cu is narrower), the thickness that they found is very different to the thicknesses found in the other previous works.…”

“…4,5,7 It has been shown that the Si L 2,3 VV Auger transition can be used as a fingerprint to know whether or not there is reaction between Si and Cu atoms. The formation of a reacted phase is manifested in the spectra as a splitting of the Auger transition line into two broad peaks (at 90 and 94 eV kinetic energy).…”

“…It will be shown in this paper that the bulk chemistry of the interface dominates over the kinetics in determining the interface structure, and that the SB height depends neither on the interface quality nor on the deposition sequence, in agreement with previously published results. 7,8 In order to find out the influence of interface roughness on the SB height, we have grown Si on polycrystalline Cu and on a well-characterized Cu(110) single crystal. It has been reported recently that the latter case leads to the formation of a single-atom, atomically sharp and ordered bi-dimensional alloy.…”