No abstract

The solid state reaction between copper and silicon has been studied using Rutherford backscattering, glancing-angle x-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and x-ray photoemission spectroscopy. Schottky-barrier-height measurements on n-type Si (100) have also been performed in the temperature range of 95–295 K with the use of a current-voltage technique. The results show that a metal-rich compound with a composition in the Cu3Si range forms at low temperatures (473 K). The electronic properties of the compound are dominated by the hybridization between the Cu(d) and Si(p) valence states. A direct consequence of this hybridization is the peculiar oxidation behavior of the compound surface; both Cu and Si have been found to oxidize at room temperature. The oxidation of Si in the silicide is enhanced as compared with the oxidation of the elemental single-crystalline Si surface. Upon annealing the oxidized surface, a solid state reaction takes place: Cu2O disappears and a thicker SiO2 layer grows, owing to the large difference in free energies of formation between SiO2 and Cu2O. The n-type barrier height of 0.79 eV for both the as-deposited metal and the metal-rich silicide phase decreases with increasing temperature with a coefficient close to the temperature coefficient of the indirect energy gap in Si. These results suggest that the Fermi level at the interface is pinned relative to the valence-band edge, independent of temperature.

Voltage-breakdown curves in a Ne+0.1% Ar Penning mixture for insulated-electrode discharges are strongly influenced by changes in the surface properties of a deposited MgO cathode. A model has been developed to calculate an effective secondary-electron-emission coefficient γ in Penning mixtures as a function of the insulator-energy-band parameters. Incorporation of the calculated γ into the breakdown criterion results in good agreement between calculated and measured voltage-breakdown curves for differently prepared MgO cathode surfaces. The calculated results show that the value of γ for argon ions depends on the state of the MgO surface, and this occurs through a change in the width of the band gap of MgO. The results also show that a nonzero value of γ (Ar+) significantly lowers the breakdown voltages and changes the shape of the breakdown curves at higher values of P0d.

Electrical properties of thin films of η′-Cu3Si phase with a tetragonal crystal structure are reported on. Electrical transport in these films is found to be very sensitive to oxygen exposure. Cu3Si reacts with oxygen at room temperature to form both Si and Cu oxides, resulting in high-room-temperature (∼60 μΩ cm) and even nonmetallic resistivity. This behavior is contrasted with that of low-resistivity (∼5 μΩ cm at room temperature) Cu3Ge, which is inert in an oxygen environment.