Ellipsometric study of low-temperature silicon surface cleaning during the process of reactive ionized cluster beam deposition

Abstract

The results of in situ ellipsometric measurements on silicon surfaces ttreated by ionized gas bombardment are presented. The study was performed to investigate the surface phenomena that were thought to take place during the surface cleaning process at low temperature. It is shown that there are some explicit differences in the surface effects between ionized argon gas bombardment and ionized H 2 gas bombardment. We observed that both argon and H 2 have some shortcomings as cleaning gases when silicon substrates are cleaned to obtain the clean surfaces required for thin formation. We suggest an improved surface cleaning technique which consists of the sequential combination of ionized argon gas bombardment and ionized H 2 gas bombardment. This technique can provide a clean and flat surface at low substrate temperature.