AVS 49th International Symposium
    Surface Science Thursday Sessions
       Session SS+EL-ThA

Paper SS+EL-ThA7
Spontaneous Roughening -- Fundamental Limits in Si(100) Halogen Etch Processing

Thursday, November 7, 2002, 4:00 pm, Room C-112C

Session: Growth & Etching on Semiconductor Surfaces
Presenter: D. Chen, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Authors: D. Chen, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
J.J. Boland, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Correspondent: Click to Email
A dynamical Scanning Tunneling Microscopy and Density Functional Theory study of the thermodynamic stability of halogen-terminated Si(100) surfaces is presented. Defects-free halogen-covered Si(100) surfaces are shown to be intrinsically unstable and prone to spontaneous roughening. This instability is the result of steric effects and is observed for all halogens except fluorine (which is already known to yield rough surfaces). These results demonstrate that an atomically smooth Si(100) morphology cannot be realized using halogen etch processing which sets a lower bound on the atomic scale perfection that can be achieved using such processing.