Device Quality of Hydrogen Plasma Cleaning for Silicon Molecular Beam Epitaxy

Abstract

ABSTRACTDifferent substrate cleaning procedures were used before fabrication of pin diodes by silicon molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). We investigated the quality of these diodes in order to demonstrate the superior quality of a low energy plasma cleaning in an ultra-high vacuum ( UHV). This plasma cleaning by hydrogen makes a wet-chemical cleaning or a high-temperature desorption step unnecessary. Moreover, the plasma-cleaned substrates are so strongly hydrogen passivated, that they can be transported through air and processed in another MBE chamber without any additional cleaning steps.