Effects of rapid thermal annealing on the morphology and optical property of ultrathin InSb film deposited on SiO₂/Si substrate

Abstract

Ultrathin InSb films on SiO 2 /Si substrates are prepared by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering and rapid thermal annealing (RTA) at 300, 400, and 500 • C, respectively. X-ray diffraction (XRD) indicates that InSb film treated by RTA at 500 • C, which is higher than its melting temperature (about 485 • C), shows a monocrystalline-like feature. A high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) micrograph shows that melt recrystallization of InSb film on SiO 2 /Si (111) substrate is along the (111) planes. The transmittances of InSb films decrease and the optical band gaps redshift from 0.24 eV to 0.19 eV with annealing temperature increasing from 300 • C to 500 • C, which is indicated by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) measurement. The observed changes demonstrate that RTA is a viable technique for improving characteristics of InSb films, especially the melt-recrystallized film treated by RTA at 500 • C.

Annealing of Sputtered InSb Thin Film for III-V Semiconductor Devices Applications

“…Diffraction peaks which assigned to be (111), (220), and (311) orientations of InSb with a zinc-blend structure at 2θ values of 23.73⁰, 39.2⁰, and 46.32⁰. These values are very close to previous works [6], [8], [10], [12], [13].…”

“…The average grain sizes were 16.2, 26.4, 30.5 nm for InSb thin films annealed at 300⁰, 390⁰ and 450⁰, respectively. These average grain sizes are larger than those annealed by RTA in [8], [12]. The average grain size of InSb film increases as the annealing temperature increases, because enhanced crystallinity of the film reduces the FWHM of the (111) peak.…”

“…Fortunately, amorphous thin films can be recrystallized by annealing. In [8], InSb thin films were deposited by RF sputtering and annealed using Rapid Thermal Paper: ASAT-17-141-MS 2/7 Annealing (RTA) technique. While in [6] and [9], InSb thin films were RF sputtered on heated substrates.…”

Broadband InSb/Si heterojunction photodetector with graphene transparent electrode

“…Most of these materials have a large lattice mismatch and different thermal expansion coefficients to the silicon substrate [23], and the film-forming situation ha s a strong dependence on the preparation methods and growth conditions, so the materials formed by epitaxy may have larger defects (such as higher surface roughness and dislocation density), which will be the main cause of device performance degradation [25,26]. At present, common improvement measures are to improve the quality of materials, such as crystallinity or conductivity, through processes such as annealing [27,28]. Here, we propose a method of using graphene with good transparency and conductivity as a transparent electrode to improve device performance, while eliminating the problems of poor conductivity and low responsiveness associated with defects in the semiconductor materials, and this ha s some effect [29][30][31][32].…”