Hydrogen release in annealed hydrogenated a-Si/a-Ge multilayers

✍ Scribed by C. Frigeri; M. Serényi; N. Q. Khánh; A. Csik; Z. Erdélyi; L. Nasi; D. L. Beke; H.-G. Boyen

• Book ID: 102128573
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 148 KB
• Volume: 46
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0232-1300
• DOI: 10.1002/crat.201000632

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

A combined study of hydrogenated sputtered single a‐Si and a‐Ge layers and a‐Si/a‐Ge multilayers (MLs) has been carried out in order to establish the reasons of H release and associated structural degradation of the MLs when they are submitted to annealing. ERDA analysis of the single layers of a‐Si and a‐Ge shows that H escapes from the layer much more efficiently in a‐Ge than in a‐Si. This agrees with IR absorbance measurements on the MLs showing that the Ge‐H signal disappears at a lower annealing time (for a given annealing temperature) than Si‐H and Si‐H~2~ do. The conclusion is drawn that the structural degradation of a‐Si/a‐Ge MLs primary starts with release of H in the Ge layers most probably because of the smaller binding energy of the H‐Ge bond and the greater weakness of the Ge lattice. (© 2011 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)