Compositional Microanalysis of the Obtained Copper Silicide from an Annealed Ternary System Cu/Au/Si by Standard RBS, Microprobe PIXE, XRD and EDS

Abstract

The composition of an annealed ternary system is examined by combined ion beam analysis (standard RBS & nuclear microprobe PIXE), SEM (morphology & EDS) and also with XRD to get the elemental composition and distribution over particular micro regions. The ternary system is built by the superposition of two metal layers, Gold and Copper respectively, both having 1200 Å in thickness, successively deposited on a (111) monocristalline silicon substrate. Then, the whole system is subjected to a vacuum heat treatment (at 400°C during 30 min). The enhanced interdiffusion and the arisen transformations are evidenced [8]. The investigations are particularly, emphasized on the induced Copper Silicide. A mapping of the elemental distribution, over restricted area is provided by micro-PIXE using the method of Dynamic Analysis as well as the corresponding Geo-PIXE II Software package. On the other hand, a special web network likewise is realized by performing several EDS punctual analysis, strictly focused on the formed phase site resulting in a well defined planar zoning of the elemental distribution.