An X-ray scattering study of SiO x/Si/Ge(001)

Abstract

X-ray scattering has been used to study the interfacial structure of a dry oxide grown at room temperature on a system consisting of four layers of Si epitaxially grown on Ge(001). The model producing the best fit to the data consists of a Ge single-crystal substrate, five intermediate ordered layers and an amorphous oxide layer. Unlike the dry oxide grown on an atomically flat Si(001) substrate which consists of a 5 Å layer of amorphous SiO 2 with some laminar order in the growth direction [1], the observed amorphous oxide layer is about 8–9 Å thick and lacks appreciable laminar order. Together with X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) data, the data indicate that not all of Si is oxidized and that there exists oxidized Ge in the amorphous layer.