Surface structures of silicon nitride thin films on Si(111)

Epitaxial growth of β‐Si3N4 by the nitridation of Si with adsorbed N atoms for interface reaction epitaxy of double buffer AlN(0001)/β‐Si3N4/Si(111)

“…These results indicated that the nitradation took place partially. This fact is consistent of the result of [9]. Figure 2 shows an evolution of RHEED pattern after the nitridation at 300 o C for 4 min.…”

“…However, a coherent epitaxial β-Si 3 N 4 / Si(111) interface can be formed by solid state reaction of thin SiN x amorphous films by annealing at higher substrate temperatures [7]. Two structural models of "8 x 8" and "8/3 x 8/3" were reported by the several groups [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. The recent structural models of the "8 x 8" and "8/3 x 8/3" were reported as follows; the 3.07 nm superstructure measured by scanning tunneling microscope STM is the 4 x 4 reconstruction of the β-Si 3 N 4 (0001), which is corresponding to "8 x 8" based on Si(111) unit cell, while the 1.02 nm periodic structure of "8/3 x 8/3" reconstruction is an incomplete nitridation phase on Si(111) surface [9].…”

Nearly-free electronlike surface resonance of aβ−Si3N4(0001)/Si(111)−8×8<

“…Most part of the theoretical studies focused on the atomic structure and on the electronic structure of the nitride/silicon interface [3,4,15], even very recently [16]. While several attempts to describe the atomic structure of the reconstructed surface exist in the literature [17][18][19][20][21], studies about its electronic structure have been probably hampered by the high computational demand. According to the currently accepted model [17] the basic system consists of a rest layer of silicon and nitrogen atoms in a very complex relaxed bulk-terminated structure and an adlayer formed by nine nitrogen atoms per surface unit cell.…”

“…The diamond shaped unit cell is asymmetric: only one-half of the cell shows three pairs of atoms in between the nitrogen adatoms. However, problems regarding the details of the reconstruction are not yet solved, e.g., the existence of dangling bonds (DBs), the kinds of DBs, and * Roberto.Flammini@cnr.it the differences between simulations and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) measurements [18,19,[22][23][24][25].…”

Efficient passivation and size control of Si nanograins with stable photoluminescence

“…Whereas there is a large percentage of surface-exposed atoms with dangling bands in the silicon grain, which would make it sensitive to the impurity in the air and would have a negative effect on its properties of photoluminescence [1,2] . Much effort has been devoted to research of passivation of the silicon nanograins by using various materials such as silicon oxidation [3,4] , silicon hydride [5] and silicon nitride as well [6,7,8] , whereas silicon nitride may have some advantages. It is well known that barriers at the Si/SiO 2 interface are 3.8 and 3.15eV for holes and electrons, respectively, which requires the large electric fields to inject electrons and holes into the oxide.…”