A Study of HCl-H[sub 2] and GeCl[sub 4]-H[sub 2] Etching of Germanium Substrates for Epitaxial Deposition

Abstract

As part of an investigation of in situ etching of germanium substrates in a reaction chamber, prior to epitaxial deposition, a study was made of the kinetics and reaction chemistry of the Ge-HC1 and Ge-GeC14 etch reactions taking place in flowing hydrogen. Recent work has been reported on the in situ gas phase etching of silicon and germanium samples by Bean and Gleim (1), Lang and Stavish (2), and Amick et al. (3). The latter authors have reported in detail on the substrate texture obtained by gas phase etching prior to epitaxial deposition.

Growth Mechanism for Germanium Deposition near a SiO[sub 2]-Ge Boundary

“…In lieu of any detailed kinetic information we simply point out that if this conversion is sufficiently rapid, then the major chemically reactive species diffusing through the stagnant layer could be GeHC13 or GeCI2. Investigations by infrared spectroscopy (21)(22)(23) indicate that such might be the case, although operating conditions w e r e different from ours. The o v e r -a l l reaction [1] is assumed to hold also for the adsorbed GeC14 at the oxide-Ge boundary.…”

Growth Rate and Surface Morphology Studies in the GeCl[sub 4]-H[sub 2] System

“…Since the initial work by Theurer et al (1), the reduction of GeC14 with hydrogen for epitaxial deposition of germanium has been used extensively (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11). Cave and Czorny (2) and Goorissen and Bruijning (10) have described the epitaxial process as it applies to the preparation of semiconductor devices.…”

“…Many authors (1-10) formulated solutions to the point contact problem with infinite and finite geometries, but with only one layer of material on a perfectly insulating or conducting substrate. Other authors (11)(12)(13) have discussed the finite area contact in similar geometries. Very early work (14)(15)(16)(17) has been published for point contacts on multilayered structures but very few calculations were carried out.…”

Optical Characterization of GaAs Layers Grown on Ge Substrates

“…At the substrate temperatures adopted in this experiment, 680 ~ ~ 720~ the predominant reaction between Ge and HC1 is expressed as (14) Ge -6 3HC1 ~ Ge.HC13 -6 H~2 [1] with the equilibrium constant, Kp1, which was given by Miller et aI. (14) as a function of temperature. In this case, the partial pressure of GeHC13 can be expressed by…”