EFFECT OF RAPID THERMAL TREATMENT CONDITIONS ON ELECTROPHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF CROMIUM THIN FILMS ON SILICON

Abstract

Present paper is devoted the determination of the effect of the temperature of the process of rapid thermal treatment of chromium films on n-type conductivity silicon on their resistivity and contact properties of the interface. Chromium films of about 30 nm thickness were deposited by magnetron sputtering onto the surface of silicon substrates having a resistivity of 0.58 to 0.53 ohms×cm. The rapid thermal treatment was carried out in a heat balance mode by irradiating the back side of the substrates with non-coherent light flux in nitrogen ambient for 7 seconds. Quartz halogen incandescent lamps were used as the heating source. The temperature of the rapid thermal process ranged from 200 to 550 °C. The thickness of the chromium films was determined by raster electron microscopy. The surface resistance of the samples was measured by a four- probe method. The Schottky barrier height and the ideality factor were determined from I-V plots. It is shown that at the temperature of the rapid thermal process 400 °C a layer of chromium disilicide is formed, causing a sharp increase in the resistivity of chromium films to 1.2 mOhm×cm and the height of the Schottky barrier to 0.6 V. When the temperature of the rapid thermal process is further increased to 550 °C, the resistivity increases monotonically to 4.0 mOhm×cm due to the increase in the width of the interstitial boundaries increasing the scattering of charge carriers in the CrSi2 layers. It has also been shown that rapid thermal treatment of the Cr/Si structure at a temperature of 450–500 °C enables to obtain rectifying contacts with a barrier height of 0.615 V and an ideality factor of 1.1. The results obtained can be used in the technology of integrated electronics products containing Schottky contacts as well as thin film resistors.