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SILICON CLUSTERS IN SILICON MONOXIDE FILMS

A. Szekeres1,* , T. Nikolova1, A. Paneva2, A. Cziraki3, Gy. Kovacs4, I. Lisovskyy5, D. Mazunov5, I. Indutnyy5, P. Shepeliavyi5

Affiliation

  1. Institute of Solid State Physics, Tzarigradsko Chaussee 72, Sofia 1784, Bulgaria
  2. Sofia University, Faculty of Physics, Blvd. Bouchier 5, Sofia 1126, Bulgaria
  3. Eotvos L. University, Solid State Physics, Pazmany P. s. 1, 1117 Budapest, Hungary
  4. Res. Institute for Techn. Phys.&Mat. Sci., Konkoly T. 29, Budapest 1121, Hungary
  5. Institute of Semiconductor Physics, Prospekt Nauki 45, Kiev 252028, Ukraine

Abstract

In this paper, results of ellipsometric, XRD and TEM studies on evaporated and thermally annealed thin SiOx films are presented. The thickness of the films was determined from the ellipsometric measurements and checked by TEM pictures taken in cross-section mode. The composition of the SiOx films was estimated by applying different models to simulate the ellipsometric data. It has been shown that annealing at 700 oC leads to appearance of amorphous Si clusters. The Si nanoclusters in crystalline phase were found only after annealing at 1000 oC. By X-ray scattering measurements, only one crystalline peak is detected, mirroring the (100) orientation of the Si substrate, which suggests that the size of Si nanocrystallites is too small to be observed with XRD, or their volume fraction is too low. The TEM images have proven the presence of crystallized Si clusters in the oxide matrix being randomly distributed and sized between 1 - 4 nm. The ellipsometric modeling results are in good agreement with the XRD and TEM observations, as they detect crystalline Si inclusions at 1000 oC with a volume fraction less than 12 %..

Keywords

Silicon monoxide, Nanocrystalline Si clusters, Spectral ellipsometry, X-ray diffractometry, Transmission electron microscopy.

Submitted at: April 13, 2005
Accepted at: May 26, 2005

Citation

A. Szekeres, T. Nikolova, A. Paneva, A. Cziraki, Gy. Kovacs, I. Lisovskyy, D. Mazunov, I. Indutnyy, P. Shepeliavyi, SILICON CLUSTERS IN SILICON MONOXIDE FILMS, Journal of Optoelectronics and Advanced Materials Vol. 7, Iss. 3, pp. 1383-1387 (2005)