Epitaxial Growth Of Platinum-Group Metal Silicides On (111) SI

Abstract

ABSTRACTEpitaxial ruthenium, osmium, rhodium and iridium suicides have been successfully grown on silicon. Electroless chemical plating was used to deposit platinum-group metal thin films on silicon. Two step annealing was found to be effective in inducing the growth and improving the quality of the epitaxial suicide on silicon.Transmission electron microscopy was applied to characterize the microstructures and determine the orientation relationships between epitaxial suicides and substrate Si. The compositions of deposited films were determined by scanning Auger electron spec-troscopy combined with depth profiling technique. The percentages of phosphorus were found to be in the range of 2–3 at. %.