Low-temperature epitaxial growth of cerium dioxide layers on (111) silicon substrates

Abstract

The temperature dependence of the epitaxial growth of cerium dioxide (CeO2) layers on (111) silicon substrates was studied using ultra-high-vacuum evaporation, varying the substrate temperature in the range between 150 and 900 °C. Characterization using Rutherford backscattering spectrometry and reflection high-energy electron diffraction proved that a CeO2 layer on (111) silicon has considerably good crystalline quality in the range between 200 and 850 °C. It is clarified that the epitaxy can be attained even at surprisingly low temperatures (less than 200 °C). A substrate temperature above 850 °C leads to rather poor crystallinity due to an exponential increase of residual gas pressure. Refractive indices of the epitaxial layers were measured by ellipsometry to be in the range of 2.19–2.79.

Stoichiometry–structure correlation of epitaxial Ce1−Pr O2− (x=0−1) thin films on Si(111)

“…It is noted that this approach has already been successfully applied to pure cerium oxide [12]. In particular, CeO 2 (111) films were grown on Si(111) exhibiting a fluorite lattice [13,14]. Recently, ultrathin Ce 2 O 3 films were successfully stabilized under UHV condition on Si(111) [15].…”

Oxygen radical irradiation effect in reactive magnetron sputtering for orientation selective epitaxial growth of layers on Si(100) substrates

“…2(c). The strong (1 1 1)-oriented growth features seen in samples B and C are explained by strong tendency of (1 1 1) oriented nucleus generation of CeO 2 below epitaxial temperature [2][3][4]. FWHM values of XRD peaks of samples A-E are summarized in Table 2.…”

“…Epitaxial growth of CeO 2 layers on Si substrates has been studied for the application to microelectronics, due to its advantageous properties, such as high dielectric constant, chemical stability, transmission in the visible and infrared regions and highly efficient ultra-violet absorption [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. Many works have showed that epitaxially grown CeO 2 layers on Si(1 0 0) substrates have (1 1 0) orientation and require high growth temperature [1,7,10].…”

Orientation selective epitaxial growth of CeO2 layers on Si(1 0 0) substrates using reactive DC magnetron sputtering with substrate bias

“…For applications to silicon technology, epitaxial growth of CeO 2 thin films on Si substrates has been studied, where a great deal of effort has been devoted to make use of close epitaxial relations of CeO 2 with silicon: both materials have cubic symmetry and a lattice mismatch parameter between them is a very small value of 0.35%. Epitaxial growth of CeO 2 layers on Si substrates has been studied for the application to microelectronics [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. Although CeO 2 (1 1 1) layers grow on Si(1 1 1) substrates at very low temperatures, such as room temperature with excellent crystallinity [1][2][3][4][5][6][7], epitaxial growth on Si(1 0 0) substrates requires higher growth temperature and has strong tendency to grow with (1 1 0) orientation [1,8,10].…”

“…Epitaxial growth of CeO 2 layers on Si substrates has been studied for the application to microelectronics [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. Although CeO 2 (1 1 1) layers grow on Si(1 1 1) substrates at very low temperatures, such as room temperature with excellent crystallinity [1][2][3][4][5][6][7], epitaxial growth on Si(1 0 0) substrates requires higher growth temperature and has strong tendency to grow with (1 1 0) orientation [1,8,10]. Much efforts have been devoted in obtaining single crystalline (1 1 0)-layers by preventing double domain structure formation using miscut substrates and lowering of epitaxial growth temperature by electron beam assistance during evaporation [11][12][13].…”