Solid‐phase growth of Mg₂Si by annealing in inert gas atmosphere

Abstract

Magnesium silicide (Mg2Si) is an attractive semiconductor material for application to thermo‐electric conversion devices because it consists of non‐toxic and resource‐abundant elements. There were difficulties, however, in preparation of Mg2Si thin films coming from large difference in thermodynamic properties between Mg and Si. In the present study, preparation of Mg2Si thin films by solid‐phase synthesis; thermal annealing of metallic Mg on a Si substrate in argon gas atmosphere, is tested and optimum annealing conditions for the synthesis are explored. As a result, it is found that the optimum annealing temperature is 300‐350 °C and the argon gas pressure should be higher than 50 Pa. (© 2013 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

Infiltration of Cellular Silicon by Molten Magnesium Alloys

“…Hence, a subsequent heat treatment (optionally in combination with a mechanical treatment) needs to be applied in order to achieve a larger d D and, further, to facilitate a full conversion of Si and Mg(‐Sn) into the intermetallic compounds. The reaction process of the constituents has been reported to be diffusion‐controlled and can be described by d D = ( k × t ) 1/2 , where d D is the diffusion layer thickness, k is the parabolic growth rate, and t is the growth time . Mizuyoshi et al studied the growth rate of Mg 2 Si on Si substrates in Mg vapor under vacuum and achieved a diffusion layer thickness of d D ≈ 45 µm after annealing at ϑ A = 500 °C for t = 180 min.…”

Solid-phase synthesis of Mg₂Si thin film on sapphire substrate

“…However, large difference in thermodynamic properties of Mg and Si has made the synthesis of a stoichiometric Mg2Si film by physical vapor deposition (PVD) rather challenging [1]. Nevertheless, many studies have been devoted to make high-quality Mg2Si films by using various deposition methods such as MBE [1,2], sputter deposition [3][4][5][6][7], and vacuum evaporation [8]. In these studies, single-crystal silicon has commonly been used as the substrate because only Mg is needed to be deposited to synthesize Mg2Si.…”