Interface mixing induced by swift heavy ions at metal-oxide/silicon interfaces

• Published in: Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section B, Beam interactions with materials and atoms Beam interactions with materials and atoms, 2005-04, Vol.230 (1-4), p.240-245
• Main Authors: Schattat, B., Bolse, W., Elsanousi, A., Renz, T.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Ion beam mixing; Nuclear tracks; Swift heavy ions
• ISSN: 0168-583X; 1872-9584
• DOI: 10.1016/j.nimb.2004.12.048

It was observed previously that ceramic/ceramic bilayers were very sensitive with respect to the electronic stopping power Se, i.e. strong interface mixing, scaling with Se2, occurred if a threshold Sec was exceeded. The threshold seemed to be determined by the higher track formation threshold of two constituents forming the bilayer. Although no track formation has been observed in crystalline Si even for Uranium projectiles, interface mixing was observed previously for some Si-multilayers. In this paper we report on the interface mixing of NiO, Fe2O3, TiO2 on Si due to irradiation with 90–350MeV Ar-, Kr-, Xe- and Au-ions at 80K at fluences up to 9E15 ions/cm2. Interface mixing, analyzed by means of Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry (RBS), is found for these bilayers, too. But the threshold for intermixing is significantly higher compared to the ceramic/ceramic bilayers. This observation could be an evidence for the threshold being determined by the Si-layer. In contrast to NiO/Si and Fe2O3/Si, where an usual random walk mixing Δσ2=kΦ was observed, the interface broadening Δσ2 for TiO2/Si is found to scale nonlinearly with the ion fluence, which indicates that mixing is driven by a chemical solid-state reaction. At higher fluences plateaus form at the low energy Ni-edge of the RBS spectra. The plateaus indicate phase formation. X-Ray diffraction spectra does not show any evidence for new crystalline phases.