1990 Electronic Materials Conference

Silicon doped epitaxial layers of InP have been prepared by low pressure metalorganic chemical vapour deposition, using disilane as the source of silicon. Trimethylindium and phosphine were used as the source reactants for the growth. The doping characteristics for the epitaxial growth were investigated at substrate temperatures in the range 525–750° C and for doping levels in the range 4 × 10¹⁶−2 × 10¹⁹ cm⁻³. The results indicated that the Si doping level is proportional to the disilane flow rate. The Si incorporation rate increases with temperature, but becomes temperature-independent forT > 620° C. Comparison between Si concentrations determined by Secondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy, donor levels determined by Hall effect measurements, and optical measurements at 7 K indicates that approximately 50% of the Si in the InP is in the form of electrically inactive species. Uniform doping over 5 cm wafer dimensions has been obtained for growth atT = 625° C.     

Enhancement of Si-donor incorporation by Ga adatoms in Si delta-doped GaAs grown by molecular beam epitaxy

We report on the realization of a modified delta doping technique to obtain doping profiles in MBE grown GaAs, measured by capacitance-voltage (C-V) methods with full-widths at half-maximum (FWHM)s of 25 ± 5Å and peak concentrations of up to 1.1 × 10¹⁹ cm^?3. In this modified delta doping technique, both the Ga and Si shutters were opened for 15 sec during the delta doped layer growth while only the Si shutter is opened during conventional delta doping. Comparison of the two techniques under the same dopant flux and shutter-open-time interval shows that higher sheet-carrier concentrations with narrower FWHMs and higher peak concentrations are obtained with the modified delta doping than with the conventional delta doping method. This suggests that Si donor incorporation is enhanced by the Ga adatoms while broadening of the Si donor distribution is still negligible for this short time interval. The effects of the substrate temperature and the shutter-open time on the Si donor distribution have also been investigated.     

Origin of photoluminescence from Er3+ centers in erbium doped GaAs and Al0.4Ga0.6 As grown by MBE

Sharp erbium-related intra-4f shell luminescence from Er doped GaAs and Al_0.4Ga_0.6 As epitaxial layers grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) is presented. The emission arising from the two Er³⁺ excited states,⁴I_13/2 and⁴I_11/2 are studied. We have observed, by means of heat treatment under differentambients such as As, Ga and Al over pressure, that the optically active Er³⁺ preferentially occupies a Column III lattice site or Column III related defects. The photoluminescence results of co-doping Al_0.4Ga_0.6As:Er with Si and Be by MBE is also reported for the first time. A strong single 1.54 μm spontaneous emission line is achieved by co-doping with Be (≈1×10¹⁸ cm⁻³). This improvement is a result of successfully eliminating or suppressing the other transitions without sacrificing the 1.54 μm emission intensity or linewidth.     

Low-temperature growth of silicon epitaxial layers codoped with erbium and oxygen atoms

The fabrication technology and properties of light-emitting Si structures codoped with erbium and oxygen are reported. The layers are deposited onto (100) Si by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) using an Er-doped silicon sublimation source. The partial pressure of the oxygen-containing gases in the growth chamber of the MBE facility before layer growth is lower than 5 × 10^?10 Torr. The oxygen and erbium concentrations in the Si layers grown at 450°C is ～1 × 10¹⁹ and 10¹⁸ cm^?3, respectively. The silicon epitaxial layers codoped with erbium and oxygen have high crystal quality and yield effective photoluminescence and electroluminescence signals with the dominant optically active Er-1 center forming upon postgrowth annealing at a temperature of 800°C.     

Deposition,post-deposition annealing,and characterization of epitaxial Ge films grown on Si(100) by pyrolysis of GeH4

As a first step towards developing heterostructures such as GaAs/Ge/Si entirely by chemical vapor deposition, Ge films have been deposited on (100) Si by the pyrolysis of GeH₄. The best films are grown at 700° C and are planar and specular, with RBS minimum channeling yields of ≈4.0% (near the theoretical value) and defect densities of 1.3 x 10⁸ cm⁻². Variations of in-situ cleaning conditions, which affect the nature of the Si substrate surface, greatly affect the ability to get good epitaxial growth at 700° C. The majority of the defects found in the Ge films are extrinsic stacking faults, formed by dissociation of misfit and thermal expansion accommodation dislocations. The stacking fault density is not significantly reduced by post-deposition annealing, as is the case for the dislocations observed in MBE Ge films. It is suggested that lowering the CVD growth temperature through the use of high vacuum deposition equipment would result in dislocation defects like those of MBE films which could then be annealed more effectively than stacking faults. Films with defect densities equivalent to MBE Ge films (~2 x 10⁷ cm⁻²) could then probably be produced.     

Be doped GaAs grown by migration enhanced epitaxy at low substrate temperature

Conductive Be doped GaAs grown by molecular beam epitaxy at low substrate temperatures (300° C) was obtained for the first time by using migration enhanced epitaxy (MEE) without subsequent annealing. The layers were characterized using Hall effect, double crystal x-ray diffraction, and photoluminescence. With low arsenic exposure, the low temperature MEE layers doped with Be had the same carrier density and similar luminescent efficiency as layers grown by conventional MBE at 580° C. Mobility at 77 K was reduced somewhat for layers doped at 2 × 10¹⁷cm⁻³, which also exhibited hopping conductivity below 40 K. Double crystal x-ray diffraction showed that low temperature MEE samples grown at low As exposure had the narrow linewidth associated with conventional MBE material grown at 580° C, unlike layers grown by conventional MBE at low temperatures, which exhibit an expansion in lattice parameter.     

Influence of arsenic incorporation on surface morphology and Si doping in GaAs(110) homoepitaxy

We have studied the relationship between the arsenic incorporation kinetics and the surface morphology and Si doping behaviour in GaAs(110) films grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). The homoepitaxial growth of GaAs(110) requires low substrate temperatures and high As/Ga flux ratios to obtain films with good surface morphology, and under these conditions Si doped layers exhibit n-type behaviour. At higher growth temperatures and lower As/Ga flux ratios, the epitaxial films are highly faceted and the Si doped layers are p-type. We show that this growth related site switching behaviour and variation in surface morphology is due to a decrease in the As coverage arising from a small and temperature dependent incorporation coefficient of arsenic on this surface.     

Annealing effect on the P-type carrier concentration in low-temperature processed arsenic-doped HgCdTe

We report the results of annealing effects on the As-doped alloy HgCdTe grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), arsenic (As) diffusion in HgCdTe from Hg-rich solutions at low temperatures, and As ion implantation at room temperature. Hall-effect measurements, secondary ion mass spectrometry and p-on-n test photodiodes were used to characterize the As activation. High As-doping levels (10¹⁷−10¹⁹ cm⁻³) could be obtained using either MBE growth, As diffusion or As ion-implantation. Annealed below 400°C, As doping in HgCdTe shows n-type characteristics, but above 410°C demonstrates that all methods of As doping exhibit p-type characteristics independent of As incorporation techniques. For example, for samples annealed at 436°C (P_Hg≈2 atm), in addition to p-type activation, we observe a significant improvement of p/n junction characteristics independent of the As source; i.e. As doping either in situ, by diffusion, or ion implantation. A study of this As activation of As-doped MBE HgCdTe as a function of anneal temperature reveals a striking similarity to results observed for As diffusion into HgCdTe and implanted As activation as a function of temperature. The observed dependence of As activation on partial pressure of Hg at various temperatures in the range of 250 to 450°C suggests that As acts as an acceptor at high Hg pressure (>1 atm) and as a donor at low Hg pressure (<1 atm) even under Hg-rich conditions.     

Structural and electrical properties of unintentionally doped 4H-SiC epitaxial layers—Grown by hot-wall CVD

This paper focuses on growth of 4H−SiC epitaxial layers using the hot-wall CVD technique. The relation between the growth regime like total flow, system pressure, C/Si ratio and growth temperature and the characteristics of nominally undoped epilayers, such as thickness uniformity and background doping concentration have been investigated. The epitaxial layers were investigated by optical microscopy, capacitance-voltage measurements, x-ray rocking curve maps, electron channelling patterns and secondary ion mass spectroscopy. Layers up to 40 μm in thickness with a variation of about ±4% and with residual n-type doping levels in the low 10¹⁴ cm⁻³ ranges have been obtained on Si faces wafers. SIMS measurements have shown that the impurity concentration of acceptors like B and Al is below 2×10¹⁴ cm⁻³.     

Investigations on low temperature mo-cvd growth of GaAs

The growth conditions for the deposition at low temperatures of epitaxial layers of GaAs on (100) GaAs crystals using TMG and arsine are studied in detail. The films are grown at atmospheric pressure in a vertical reactor in which the arsine is fed in through the rf heated susceptor for precracking. The growth temperature was varied between 680°C and 450°C. In the whole temperature range epitaxial growth was obtained. The growth rate at temperatures below 600°C depends on the AsH₃ flow, suggesting that the availibility of As vapor species, not AsH₃ limits epitaxial growth in this temperature range. For a constant AsH₃ /TMG ratio of 8 the growth rate decreases by exp (-E/kT) with an activation energy of E = 1.5 eV. Growth rates as low as 0.5 um/h have been achieved. Unintentionally doped layers show semi-insulating behaviour at growth temperatures below 500° C, similar to the behaviour seen from MBE layers. However, n-type layers with reasonable mobilities can be grown in the low temperature range (450 ° C) using H₂ Se as the doping gas.     

Growth optimization and doping with Si and Be of high quality GaN on Si(111) by molecular beam epitaxy

GaN layers have been grown by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy on AlN-buffered Si(111) substrates. An initial Al coverage of the Si substrate of aproximately 3 nm lead to the best AlN layers in terms of x-ray diffraction data, with values of full-width at half-maximum down to 10 arcmin. A (2×2) surface reconstruction of the AlN layer can be observed when growing under stoichiometry conditions and for substrate temperatures up to 850°C. Atomic force microscopy reveals that an optimal roughness of 4.6 nm is obtained for AlN layers grown at 850°C. Optimization in the subsequent growth of the GaN determined that a reduced growth rate at the beginning of the growth favors the coalescence of the grains on the surface and improves the optical quality of the film. Following this procedure, an optimum x-ray full-width at half-maximum value of 8.5 arcmin for the GaN layer was obtained. Si-doped GaN layers were grown with doping concentrations up to 1.7×10¹⁹ cm⁻³ and mobilities approximately 100 cm²/V s. Secondary ion mass spectroscopy measurements of Be-doped GaN films indicate that Be is incorporated in the film covering more than two orders of magnitude by increasing the Be-cell temperature. Optical activation energy of Be acceptors between 90 and 100 meV was derived from photoluminescence experiments.     

Advances in remote plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition for low temperature In situ hydrogen plasma clean and Si and Si1-xGex epitaxy

Remote plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (RPCVD) is a low temperature growth technique which has been successfully employed inin situ remote hydrogen plasma clean of Si(100) surfaces, silicon homoepitaxy and Si_{1- x}Ge_x heteroepitaxy in the temperature range of 150–450° C. The epitaxial process employs anex situ wet chemical clean, anin situ remote hydrogen plasma clean, followed by a remote argon plasma dissociation of silane and germane to generate the precursors for epitaxial growth. Boron doping concentrations as high as 10²¹ cm^?3 have been achieved in the low temperature epitaxial films by introducing B₂H₆/He during the growth. The growth rate of epitaxial Si can be varied from 0.4Å/min to 50Å/min by controlling therf power. The wide range of controllable growth rates makes RPCVD an excellent tool for applications ranging from superlattice structures to more conventional Si epitaxy. Auger electron spectroscopy analysis has been employed to confirm the efficacy of this remote hydrogen plasma clean in terms of removing surface contaminants. Reflection high energy electron diffraction and transmission electron microscopy have been utilized to investigate the surface structure in terms of crystallinity and defect generation. Epitaxial Si and Si_1-xGe_x films have been grown by RPCVD with defect densities below the detection limits of TEM (~10⁵ cm^-2 or less). The RPCVD process also exploits the hydrogen passivation effect at temperatures below 500° C to minimize the adsorption of C and 0 during growth. Epitaxial Si and Si_1-xGe_x films with low oxygen content (~3 × 10₁₈ cm^-3) have been achieved by RPCVD. Silicon and Si/Si_1-xGe_x mesa diodes with boron concentrations ranging from 10¹⁷ to 10¹⁹ cm^-3 in the epitaxial films grown by RPCVD show reasonably good current-voltage characteristics with ideality factors of 1.2-1.3. A Si/Si_1-xGe_x superlattice structure with sharp Ge transitions has been demonstrated by exploiting the low temperature capability of RPCVD.In situ plasma diagnostics using single and double Langmuir probes has been performed to reveal the nature of the RPCVD process.     

Improvements of the SiC homoepitaxy process in a horizontal cold-wall CVD reactor

In this research effort, we investigate the influence of the cold-wall reactor geometry on the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth process of 4H-SiC and the quality of lightly doped epitaxial layers. Stable growth conditions with respect to growth rate and C/Si ratio of the gas-phase can be achieved by the appropriate choice of the distance between susceptor and walls of the inner quartz tube. A background doping concentration in the range of 10¹⁴ cm⁻³ is realized by employing a high temperature stable and hydrogen etch resistant coating of the graphite susceptor. Doping and thickness homogeneity of epitaxial layers on 35 mm diam. 4H-SiC substrates, expressed by σ/mean, are as low as 6.9 and 7.7%, respectively. From deep level transient spectroscopy measurements, the concentration of the frequently reported intrinsic Z₁-center in 4H-SiC is determined to be below the detection limit of 10¹² cm⁻³.     

Improvement of Ni/Si/4H-SiC ohmic contacts by VLS grown sub-contact layer

This work presents results of using VLS epitaxial Si-Ge-type structure as a sub-contact layer designated for Ni/Si ohmic contacts. The epitaxial growth was performed at 1240 and 1414 °C in various types of atmosphere in a processing chamber. The prepared layers had mostly smooth surface. XPS analysis showed that germanium escape from the structure occurred during the process of the epitaxial growth. An important result is that silicon and carbon bind in the form of SiC already at the surface of the structure, which proves silicon carbide formation during the epitaxial growth. Ni/Si-type contact metallization was deposited onto all epitaxial structures. After annealing we received ohmic contacts with contact resistivity equal or lower compared to the standard contact structure Ni/Si/SiC prepared on the same substrate. The best value of contact resistivity was 4 × 10⁻⁵ Ω cm². The doping concentration in the VLS epitaxial layers is reaching the value (6-7) × 10¹⁸ cm⁻³.     

分子束外延In掺杂硅基碲镉汞研究

利用分子束外延(Molecular Beam Epitaxy, MBE)系统生长了In掺杂硅基碲镉汞(Mercury Cadmium Telluride, MCT)材料。通过控制In源温度获得了不同掺杂水平的高质量MCT外延片。二次离子质谱仪(Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometer, SIMS)测试结果表明,In掺杂浓度在1×10¹⁵～2×10¹⁶ cm^-3之间。表征了不同In掺杂浓度对MCT外延层位错的影响。发现位错腐蚀坑形态以三角形为主(沿<■>方向排列),且位错密度与未掺杂样品基本相当。对不同In掺杂浓度的材料进行汞饱和低温处理后,样品的电学性能均有所改善。结果表明,In掺杂能够提高材料的均匀性,从而获得较高的电子迁移率。     

The behavior of unintentional impurities in Ga0.47 In0.53As grown by MBE

A number of factors contribute to the high n-type background carrier concentration (high 10¹⁵ to low 10¹⁶ cm⁻³) measured in MBE Ga_0.47In_0.53As lattice-matched to InP. The results of this study indicate that the outdiffusion of impurities from InP substrates into GalnAs epitaxial layers can account for as much as two-thirds of the background carrier concentration and can reduce mobilities by as much as 40%. These impurities and/or defects can be gettered at the surfaces of the InP by heat treatment and then removed by polishing. The GalnAs epitaxial layers grown on the heat-treated substrates have significantly improved electrical properties. Hall and SIMS measurements indicate that both donors and acceptors outdiffuse into the epitaxial layers during growth resulting in heavily compensated layers with reduced mobilities. The dominant donor species was identified by SIMS as Si, and the dominant acceptors as Fe, Cr and Mn.     

Integration of low dimensional crystalline Si into functional epitaxial oxides

In this work we show that by efficiently exploiting the growth kinetics during molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) one could create Si nanostructures of different dimensions. Examples are Si quantum dots (QD) or quantum wells (QW), which are buried into an epitaxial rare-earth oxide, e.g. Gd₂O₃. Electrical measurements carried out on Pt/Gd₂O₃/Si MOS capacitors comprised with Si-QD demonstrate that such well embedded Si-QD with average size of 5 nm and density of 2×10¹² cm⁻² exhibit very good charge storage capacity with suitable retention (∼10⁵ s) and endurance (∼10⁵ write/erase cycles) characteristics. The Pt/Gd₂O₃/Si (metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS)) basic memory cells with embedded Si-QD display large programming window (∼1.5-2 V) and fast writing speed and hence could be a potential candidate for future non-volatile memory application. The optical absorption of such Si-QD embedded into epitaxial Gd₂O₃ was found to exhibit a spectral threshold maximum up to 2.9±0.1 eV depending on their sizes, inferring a significant influence of quantum confinement on the QD/oxide interface band diagram.Ultra-thin single-crystalline Si-QW with epitaxial insulator (Gd₂O₃) as the barrier layers were grown by a novel approach based on cooperative vapor phase MBE on Si wafer with sharp interfaces between well and barriers. The current-voltage characteristics obtained for such structure exhibits negative differential resistance at lower temperature, making them a good candidate for resonant tunneling devices.     

Crystalline oxide-based devices on silicon substrates

We have developed a process to grow epitaxial SrTiO₃ (STO) on Si. This STO/Si substrate can then be used as a pseudo substrate for the further deposition of many other oxides that are closely lattice matched to STO. The STO is grown by molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) with a subsequent oxide layer deposited either by MBE or sol-gel deposition. The pseudo substrate has been used to demonstrate ferroelectric devices and piezoelectric devices. Ferroelectric capacitors using epitaxial BaTiO₃ (BTO) show a memory window of 0.5 V; however, the retention time for these devices is short because of the depolarization field caused by the silicon-oxide interface layer used to improve the band alignment of the BTO/Si interface. Surface acoustic wave (SAW) resonators using epitaxial Pb(Zr,Ti)O₃ show excellent response with a coupling coefficient of 4.6% and a velocity of 2,844 m/s.     

GaSb: A New Alternative Substrate for Epitaxial Growth of HgCdTe

In this work, GaSb is proposed as a new alternative substrate for the growth of HgCdTe via molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Due to the smaller mismatch in both lattice constant and coefficient of thermal expansion between GaSb and HgCdTe, GaSb presents a better alternative substrate for the epitaxial growth of HgCdTe, in comparison to alternative substrates such as Si, Ge, and GaAs. In our recent efforts, a CdTe buffer layer technology has been developed on GaSb substrates via MBE. By optimizing the growth conditions (mainly growth temperature and VI/II flux ratio), CdTe buffer layers have been grown on GaSb substrates with material quality comparable to, and slightly better than, CdTe buffer layers grown on GaAs substrates, which is one of the state-of-the-art alternative substrates used in growing HgCdTe for the fabrication of mid-wave infrared detectors. The results presented in this paper indicate the great potential of GaSb to become the next generation alternative substrate for HgCdTe infrared detectors, demonstrating MBE-grown CdTe buffer layers with rocking curve (double crystal x-ray diffraction) full width at half maximum of ～60 arcsec and etch pit density of ～10⁶ cm^?2.     

⟨110⟩-oriented GaAs MESFETs

GaAs metal semiconductor field-effect transistors (MESFETs) have been successfully fabricated on molecular-beam epitaxial (MBE) films grown on the off-axis (110) GaAs substrate. The (110) substrates were tilted 6° toward the (111) Ga face in order to produce device quality two-dimensional MBE growth. Following the growth of a 0.4-μm undoped GaAs buffer, a 0.18-μm GaAs channel with a doping density of 3.4×10¹⁷ cm^-3 and a 0.12-μm contact layer with a doping density of 2×10¹⁸ cm^-3, both doped with Si, were grown. MESFET devices fabricated on this material show very low-gate leakage current, low output conductance, and an extrinsic transconductance of 200 mS/mm. A unity-current-gain cutoff frequency of 23 GHz and a maximum frequency of oscillation of 56 GHz have been achieved. These (110) GaAs MESFETs have demonstrated their potential for high-speed digital circuits as well as microwave power FET applications