Phase separation due to high temperature annealing of sputtered SiO x layers

N. Karpov, V. Volodin, J. Jedrzejewski, E. Savir, I. Balberg, Y. Goldstein*, T. Egewskaya, N. Shwartz, Z. Yanovitskaya

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

SiOx layers with lateral composition gradient (co-layers), formed by co-sputtering in argon plasma from Si and SiO2 targets, were investigated both before and after high temperature annealing using IR absorption and Raman scattering. For all coordinates we found more oxygen in the co-layers than the oxygen amount in SiO2 layers sputtered from quartz target only. It was found that the quartz target surface in the plasma heats up and this may result in oxygen and silicon monoxide fluxes. The capture of this additional oxygen by the silicon flux during co-sputtering may be the reason for the excess oxygen in the co-layers. For samples with low silicon content (x>1), upon annealing a complete phase separation of SiOx into SiO2 and Si takes place. In SiOx films with high Si content some of the silicon is in the crystalline phase even before annealing.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)625-634
Number of pages10
JournalJournal of Optoelectronics and Advanced Materials
Volume11
Issue number5
StatePublished - May 2009

Keywords

  • Infrared spectroscopy
  • Si nanoparticles
  • Si-SiO system
  • Sputtering

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