The Effect of Annealing Temperature on the Structural and Optical Properties of Si/SiO2 Composites Synthesized by Thermal Oxidation of Silicon Wafers

Kamal Kayed,Dalal Baba Kurd

doi:10.1007/s12633-021-01307-w

Abstract

In this article, silicon wafers were thermal treated in air at temperatures from 800 to 1200 °C. The annealed samples were investigated using X-ray diffraction, FTIR and optical reflection spectroscopy. Unique result obtained includes that possibility of employing the thermal oxidation of silicon to obtain Si/SiOx composites with various energy gaps suitable for the manufacture of semiconductor devices. In addition, we found that the splitting of longitudinal optical and transverse optical stretching motions effect on the relative absorption coefficient. On the other hand, it has been found that, the intensity of the silicon peak in XRD spectra is proportional to the relative absorption coefficient of amorphous silicon oxide.

Highlights

IntroductionThe oxidation of silicon surfaces shows promising properties that have made them the focus of many research groups [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23], which have sought to employ various silicon oxidation techniques in the fabrication of semiconductor devices
We present the results of investigating the structural and optical properties of Si/SiO2 composites synthesized by thermal oxidation of silicon wafers, where we highlight the important effect of the effect of thermally induced structural changes on the main features of the Kubelk-Munk curves
The presence of the absorption edge of both silicon and silicon oxide helps to detect the degree of oxidation by comparing the values of the absorption coefficients at wavelength maxima both silicon and silicon oxide

Summary

Introduction

The oxidation of silicon surfaces shows promising properties that have made them the focus of many research groups [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23], which have sought to employ various silicon oxidation techniques in the fabrication of semiconductor devices. At high oxygen gas pressures and low temperature SiO2 layer growth takes place (passive oxidation) according to the reaction Si + O2 → SiO2 [24]. This oxidation method is suitable for industrial applications, there is no theoretical model that explains how the oxidation process occurs according to this method in the case of ultrathin films [25]. In the case of low oxygen gas pressures and high temperature, SiO is desorbed in an etching process (active oxidation) according to the reaction 2Si + O2 → 2SiO. We present the results of investigating the structural and optical properties of Si/SiO2 composites synthesized by thermal oxidation of silicon wafers, where we highlight the important effect of the effect of thermally induced structural changes on the main features of the Kubelk-Munk curves

Sample characterization

Results And Discussion

Conclusion