Grant, Nicholas E., Pointon, Alex I., Jefferies, Richard, Hiller, Daniel, Han, Yisong, Beanland, Richard, Walker, Marc and Murphy, John D. (2020) Atomic level termination for passivation and functionalisation of silicon surfaces. Nanoscale, 12 . 17332-17341 . doi:10.1039/d0nr03860a ISSN 2040-3364.

Preview

PDF WRAP-atomic-level-termination-passivation-functionalisation-silicon-surfaces-Murphy-2020.pdf - Published Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Download (4Mb) | Preview

Request Changes to record.

Abstract

Chemical treatments play an essential role in the formation of high quality interfaces between materials, including in semiconductor devices, and in the functionalisation of surfaces. We have investigated the effects of hydrogen and fluorine termination of (100)-orientation silicon surfaces over a range of length scales. At the centimetre scale, lifetime measurements show clean silicon surfaces can be temporarily passivated by a short treatment in both HF(2%) : HCl(2%) and HF(50%) solutions. The lifetime, and hence surface passivation, becomes better with immersion time in the former, and worse with immersion time in the latter. At the nanometre scale, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy show treatment with strong HF solutions results in a roughened fluorine-terminated surface. Subsequent superacid-derived surface passivation on different chemically treated surfaces shows considerably better passivation on surfaces treated with HF(2%) : HCl(2%) compared to HF. Lifetime data are modelled to understand the termination in terms of chemical and field effect passivation at the centimetre scale. Surfaces passivated with Al2O3 grown by atomic layer deposition behave similarly when either HF(2%) : HCl(2%) or HF(50%) are used as a pre-treatment, possibly because of the thin silicon dioxide interlayer which subsequently forms. Our study highlights that chemical pre-treatments can be extremely important in the creation of high quality functionalised surfaces.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	Q Science > QC Physics Q Science > QD Chemistry
Divisions:	Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Engineering > Engineering
Type of Data:	Experimental data
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Silicon -- Surfaces, Atomic layer deposition, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Atomic force microscopy
Journal or Publication Title:	Nanoscale
Publisher:	Royal Society of Chemistry
ISSN:	2040-3364
Official Date:	2020
Dates:	Date Event 2020 Published 13 August 2020 Available 10 July 2020 Accepted
Volume:	12
Page Range:	17332-17341
DOI:	10.1039/d0nr03860a
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Access rights to Published version:	Open Access (Creative Commons)
Date of first compliant deposit:	20 July 2020
Date of first compliant Open Access:	20 July 2020
RIOXX Funder/Project Grant:	Project/Grant ID RIOXX Funder Name Funder ID EP/M024911/1 [EPSRC] Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000266 EP/R511808/1 [EPSRC] Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000266 EP/N509796/1 [EPSRC] Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000266
Related URLs:	Related dataset

Request changes or add full text files to a record

Repository staff actions (login required)

View Item

Downloads