Interface structure and Schottky barrier height of silicade-silicon contact

Abstract

At present most rectifying contacts in integrated Si devices are made of transition metal silicides such as Pd 2 Si and PtSi. The electrical potential difference across a metal to semiconductor rectifying contact is called Schottky barrier. While many theories and studies have been devoted to increase our understanding of the origin and details of Schottky barrier, we find very little effort has been given to correlate the electrical barrier and the metal-semiconductor interface structure. We expect that there exists such a structure-property correlation and we report here our preliminary finding of the correlation in Pd 2 Si contacts to n-type Si. Silicon wafers used here were n-type, 10 to 20 Ω-cm, both (111) and (001) oriented, 1 or 1 1/4" in diameter, and HF-etched before Pd deposition. For the structural study, a 800ÅPd film was e-beam evaporated in a vacuum of 10 -7 torr onto the Si kept at various substrate temperature, T s , shown in Table I