Evaluation of average domain size and microstrain in a silicide film by the Williamson-Hall method

Abstract

The structure of chemical-vapor-deposited (CVD) WSi2 in a multilayered configuration of Si/SiO2/poly-Si/WSi2/poly-Si was analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD). Individual layers of this multilayered structure were deposited sequentially on separate wafers, and the changes occurring in WSi2 at each stage of the fabrication process were determined by XRD in the as-deposited and annealed conditions. The XRD line broadening was used to construct the Williamson-Hall (WH) plots. As a first approach to get introductory information, reflections from all planes observed by the XRD analysis were used to evaluate, by the WH technique, the mean domain size and the microstrain, respectively. At the next stage, WH plots were constructed by using planes of crystallographic families for two cases, namely, for partially crystallized and for fully crystallized multilayered films. It seems that when the film is well annealed, with small or no anisotropy, all the plains can be used to evaluate strain and domain size by the WH method, and it can provide almost the same results as those obtained from using XRD reflections only from planes of a family. This is the first time that that this well-known method has been applied to silicide films.