Properties and Applications of Silicides

Abstract

Most of the sliicide research, performed from the beginning of this century through the 1960s, used powder metallurgical techniques to produce these materials [1–6]. Silicide-related studies have primarily focused on the investigation of fundamental properties such as electrical resistivity, high-temperature stability, and corrosion resistance, as well as the silicide crystal chemistry and metal-silicon phase diagrams. The possibility of using silicides as conductors (i.e., as Schottky barriers and contacts, as well as gate and interconnect metallization) in Silicon Integrated Circuits (SICs) motivated thin-film silicide research [7–19]. Besides the measurements of Schottky barrier heights and resistivities, the intermetallic formation in the metal-silicon systems, reaction and interdiffusion kinetics, stability at the SIC processing and operating temperatures, oxidation and etching characteristics, and epitaxial growth on silicon have all been investigated in the last two decades.