Ostwald ripening of manganese silicide islands on Si(001)

Abstract

The deposition of Mn onto Si͑001͒ in the submonolayer regime has been studied with scanning tunneling microscopy to gain insight into the bonding and energetics of Mn with Si. The as-deposited Mn films at room temperature are unstructured. Upon annealing to 300-700°C three-dimensional islands of Mn or Mn x Si y form while between the islands the Si͑001͒-͑2 ϫ 1͒ reconstruction becomes visible. With increasing annealing time the density of islands per surface area decreases while the average height of the remaining islands increases. The large islands grow in size at the expense of the small ones, which can be understood in the context of Ostwald ͓Z. Phys. Chem. 34, 495 ͑1900͔͒ ripening theory. The average island height shows a time dependence of H ϳ t 1/4 , indicating that surface diffusion is the growth limiting process.

The growth of manganese layers on Si(100) at room temperature: A photoelectron spectroscopy study

“…However, the doping of Si is hampered by the extremely low solubility of Mn in Si, the preference of Mn for interstitial lattice sites over the electronically active substitutional sites, and the competition with silicide formation [6,[9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. In order to circumvent these problems we are investigating the feasibility of a surface-driven approach for the incorporation of Mn into a Si matrix.…”

“…A set of recent STM studies has been geared towards the investigation of the formation of Mn surface structures on the Si(1 0 0) surface [18][19][20]24]. The formation of silicide crystallites is observed at elevated temperatures, but 2D surface structures can evolve for lower substrate temperatures (below about 300 8C) [12,14,16,25].…”

Ferromagnetic Si/Mn27Si47 core/shell nanowire arrays

“…Among numerous transition metal silicides, manganese silicides growing on the surface of the silicon have received increased attention since their potential applications in multifunctional microelectronic and optoelectronic devices. [5][6][7] The higher manganese silicides (HMS) MnSi x (x ¼ 1.67-1.75) with direct bandgap of about 0.7 eV are desired to build silicon-based infrared detectors and light sources. 8,9 Furthermore, HMS with a composition range of x ¼ 1.73-1.75 can be good candidates for ferromagnetic semiconductors.…”

Beyond the Young-Laplace model for cluster growth during dewetting of thin films: Effective coarsening exponents and the role of long range dewetting interactions

“…Ever since the seminal studies of Lifshits and Slyozov, and, independently, of Wagner [8], coarsening processes have played a prominent role in statistical [9] and biological physics [10] and in applied physical sciences [11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. Technologically significant thin films are no exception to this, as exemplified by growing microstructures seen in epitaxial growth [11,14].…”

“…A new venue in this area emerged from recent experimental revelations that long range dewetting forces acting across thin films, such as the above discussed van der Waals interactions [18], may induce the formation of large clusters, i.e., tall multilayer islands formed during high temperature annealing of thin films, [19]. Earlier experiments with liquid Sn [13] and solid Mn films [15] on silicon evidence that the clusters grow in time by a coarsening process, with cluster linear size ∼ t 1/4 (at long times t), as predicted by Chakraverty [16,17]. However, a more complex mode of cluster growth has also been seen, in solid Co films on sapphire [20].…”