Investigation of Aluminium Diffusion into an Amorphous Silicon Thin Film at High Temperature by <i>In Situ</i> Spectroscopic Ellipsometry

Abstract

This work is to study the diffusion of Al into amorphous silicon (a-Si) thin film at the elevated temperature by in-situ Spectroscopic Ellipsometry (SE). The sputtered a-Si film 60 nm thick on an optically opaque Al (100 nm) layer on silicon wafer was heated in a temperature controlled heating sample stage from room temperature to 300°C and slowly cooled down to room temperature while the dynamic SE data were measured. It was found that the ∆ and Ψ spectra began to change quickly at 200°C until the temperature reached 250°C, then continue to changed very slowly until 300°C. No significant change could be observed while the sample was cooling down to room temperature. The full spectral SE measurements were also taken at every 50°C steps and used to model the diffusion of Al into the top a-Si film. The interface layer due to diffusion was modeled by Bruggeman Effective Medium Approximation (EMA) theory as the mixture of Al and Si.