Oxidation of Semiconducting Iron Disilicide (β-FeSi2)

Abstract

ABSTRACTIron disilicide (β-FeSi2) has gained significant importance in recent years because of its semiconducting properties. The bandgap is reported to be direct with an energy of 0.85–0.89 eV, thus making the suicide a potential candidate for optical communications and detector applications. Compatibility with standard VLSI processing might involve a suicide thermal oxidation step. This work concerns the kinetics of both dry and wet oxidations of β-FeSi2. The oxide quality was characterized with respect to the electrical breakdown voltage. The results indicate an oxidation temperature dependence of the oxide quality and that dry oxidation yield higher breakdown voltage than wet oxidation. Structural and semiconducting suicide properties were investigated before and after oxidation. High energy implantation of xenon was used in a marker experiment to investigate a possible change of oxidation mechanism between dry and wet oxidation.