Inuence of heat treatment and exposure to laser radiation on a vanadium-silicon

composite
A. M. Chaplanov and A. N. Shibko
Institute of Electronics, Belarus Academy of Sciences, 220841 Minsk, Belarus
Submitted December 20, 1995
Zh. Tekh. Fiz. 67, 9699 June 1997
The inuence of exposure to weak laser radiation during heat treatment on a vanadiumsilicon
composite is investigated. It is found that the changes in the phase composition of the
contact cause changes in its electrophysical parameters. Application of a combined treatment
permits the formation of a rectifying vanadiumsilicon contact with denite prespecified
electrophysical parameters. 1997 American Institute of Physics. S1063-78429702006-0
Refractory metals and their silicides have recently come
to be actively employed in microelectronics because of their
thermodynamic features, their promising electrophysical
properties, and their stability at high temperatures. One of
the ways to modify the electrophysical parameters of a
metalsemiconductor system is heat treatment, which alters
the electronic states at the interface. When metal
semiconductor systems are subjected to thermal annealing in
a vacuum, oxidation processes generally take place, making
it difcult to use them in the fabrication of semiconductor
devices.
1
One of the techniques which make it possible to
inuence the oxidation of a surface layer is to irradiate it
during annealing by a photon beam of denite energy.
2,3
In the present work we investigated the phase transfor-
mations and changes in the electrophysical parameters of the
VSi system during heat treatment and simultaneous expo-
sure to a laser photon beam with an energy h1.96 eV.
A vanadium lm of thickness 100 nm was obtained by
thermal deposition on n-type silicon111 in a vacuum with a
residual pressure equal to 310
4
Pa Fig. 1a. The sub-
strate temperature during deposition was 373 K. The silicon
plate was chemically treated according to the method de-
scribed in Ref. 4 before thermal deposition. The lms ob-
tained were polycrystalline and highly disperse, with a mean
grain diameter of 1520 nm.
The samples obtained were placed in a vacuum system
and subjected to thermal treatment at a residual pressure of
1.510
4
Pa and simultaneous exposure to laser radiation
with 0.63 m. The annealing temperature was
T500700 C, and the annealing times were 5, 15,
and 30 min. The power of the LGN-215 laser was varied and
monitored by an IMO-2 calorimeter during the treatment,
and it was equal to 25 or 55 mW.
The samples treated were investigated by electron dif-
fraction analysis on a JEM-120 electron microscope and by
x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy XPS. The Schottky bar-
rier height was determined from the currentvoltage charac-
teristics according to the method described in Ref. 5. The
area of the vanadiumsilicon contact was 0.07 mm
2
.
During thermal annealing of the system without expo-
sure to laser radiation, various oxide phases with a large
oxygen content, viz., V
2
O
5
and V
3
O
7
, form on the surface,
depending on the annealing time and temperature. The vana-
dium oxides form as a result of the reaction of vanadium
with oxygen that had been adsorbed by the lm during its
deposition or which diffused from the surrounding medium.
As follows from Table I, when the annealing temperature is
700 C and the annealing time is 15 or 30 min, V
2
O
5
and
VO
2
are present on the surface of the vanadium lm Fig.
1b.
The phase composition of the surface oxides does not
undergo any changes as a result of thermal annealing of the
system and simultaneous exposure to a laser photon beam
with a power equal to 25 mW the photon energy h1.96
eV Table I. However, the appearance of vanadium silicide
V
3
Si at an annealing temperature of 700 C and annealing
time of 15 or 30 min Fig. 1c must be noted. Under these
annealing conditions silicon diffuses into the vanadium,
forming the silicide.
When the power of the laser radiation is increased to 55
mW, the phase composition of the surface of the system
consists of V
2
O
3
and V
2
O
5
, and at an annealing temperature
of 700 C it consists only of V
2
O
3
Fig. 1d, Table I. There
are no vanadium oxides with a higher oxygen content, be-
cause the additional irradiation of the annealed system by a
photon beam with an energy of 1.96 eV and a denite ux
density suppresses the oxidation processes, and the dissolved
oxygen becomes chemically inactive.
6
Analyzing Table I,
we can conclude that the oxides V
3
O
2
and VO
2
, as well as
the silicide V
3
Si, are not present on the surface of the system
when the samples are irradiated at a power of 55 mW. The
photons interact with the MO and bonds. As a result,
the screening of the MM bonds decreases, preventing the
formation of the high-resistivity and silicide phases on the
surface. Incident laser radiation with a higher power is
needed to suppress the oxidation processes, since thermal
annealing results in the occurrence of an interaction between
oxygen and the vanadium lm surface, and a higher photon
ux density is needed to neutralize the MO bonds.
The XPS investigations performed showed that the
amount of oxygen in the subsurface layer decreases as a
result of heat treatment of the VSi system at T500 C for
30 min and simultaneous exposure to laser radiation with
0.63 m and a power of 55 mW. The investigations were
performed using the oxygen 1S peak Fig. 2. Figure 3 pre-
sents the variation of the oxygen concentration in the subsur-
face layer for various treatment conditions. When a heated
VSi composite is exposed to a laser beam, a photon is
672 672 Tech. Phys. 42 (6), June 1997 1063-7842/97/060672-04$10.00 1997 American Institute of Physics