Real time investigation of the effect of thermal expansion coefficient mismatch on film-substrate strain partitioning in Ag/Si systems

Abstract

We have used X-ray diffraction (XRD) to investigate strain partitioning between an epitaxial layer and the substrate as a function of temperature, where the substrate (Si) and the epilayer material (Ag) have large thermal expansion coefficient (α) mismatch. The Ag/Si(111) system undergoes morphological changes upon heating, and the larger and taller islands are formed exposing more substrate surfaces. Sample heating was carried out under nitrogen flow. At >300 °C, the Si(111) diffraction peak splits into three. One of these components conforms to the thermal expansion of bulk Si. The other two components correspond to a highly nonlinear decrease and increase of Si-d(111) planar spacing. The decreasing component has been associated with strained Si under Ag and the increasing component with strained Si under SiO2, which has been formed partly prior to the XRD experiment and partly during sample heating. The opposite trends of these two Si-d(111) components are because of the larger value of α for Ag (7 times) and smaller for SiO2 (1/5th) compared to Si. The out-of-plane strain partitioning has been such that at room temperature, the Si substrate is unstrained and the strain in Ag is ∼0.3%. At 800 °C, Ag is practically relaxed, while Si under Ag is ∼−0.7% strained. A temperature dependent strain partitioning factor has been introduced to fit the data.