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Facet Formation on Near (111) Silicon Surfaces and the Desorption Energy of SiCl 2 Adatoms
Author(s) -
Van Der Putte P.,
Giling L. J.,
Bloem J.
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
crystal research and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.377
H-Index - 64
eISSN - 1521-4079
pISSN - 0232-1300
DOI - 10.1002/crat.2170171214
Subject(s) - faceting , misorientation , etching (microfabrication) , silicon , desorption , dissolution , wafer , chemistry , facet (psychology) , surface energy , chemical physics , materials science , crystallography , nanotechnology , adsorption , microstructure , psychology , social psychology , organic chemistry , layer (electronics) , personality , grain boundary , big five personality traits
Silicon wafers which have a small misorientation from (111) become facetted, when they are etched beyond a critical HCl concentration. This facetting can be explained by the action of a second etch mechanism which directly attacks the surface between the steps. In this way enough new steps are generated to give a proper response to the desired etchrate. In BCF language: the spiral dissolution around a dislocation containing a screw component can become dominant over the etching process which occurs by a set of parallel steps, when beyond a critical HCl concentration the density of steps inside the shallow pit exceeds the density of the parallel steps due to the original misorientation. From the slope of the shallow pits at the critical HCl concentration a desorption energy for SiCl 2 adatoms of around 60 kcal/mole could be calculated.