Interfacial stability between zirconium oxide thin films and silicon

✍ Scribed by Ninglin Zhang; Zhitang Song; Su Xing; Qinwo Shen; Chenglu Lin

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 228 KB
• Volume: 66
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0167-9317
• DOI: 10.1016/s0167-9317(02)00905-x

✦ Synopsis

We studied the interfacial properties of ZrO thin films deposited by ultra-high vacuum electron beam 2 evaporation (UHV-EBE). Some samples were annealed in O ambient by rapid thermal annealing (RTA) at 2 different temperatures ranging from 300 to 700 8C. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) of all films, whether annealed or not, revealed that the binding energies of Zr3d and Zr3d are 183.5 and 185.7 eV, 5 / 2 3 / 2 41 respectively, which are the typical peak values of Zr . X-ray diffraction (XRD) results showed that the as-deposited film was amorphous, and it remained stable up to the annealing temperature of 600 8C. But when the temperature increased further attaining 700 8C, it began to crystallize. All the surfaces of the thin films were smooth and uniform. The typical RMS roughness ranged from 0.546 to 0.666 nm across an area of 50 3 50 mm. Steep and clear interfaces between zirconium oxide thin film and Si substrate were obtained both by spreading resistance profile (SRP) and cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (XTEM). High quality of the interface without interfacial oxide was achieved when the annealing temperatures were kept under 600 8C, but when the temperature was raised to 700 8C, | 1-nm thick oxide product was detected by XTEM. The component of the oxide product is not exactly known yet, but may be SiO or ZrSi O .