• Kawaguchi, Kentaro
• Higuchi, Yuji
• Ito, Hiroshi
• Kuwahara, Takuya
• Ozawa, Nobuki
• Kubo, Momoji

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Thin-film Si grows layer by layer on Si(001)-(2 × 1):H in plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. Here we investigate the reason why this occurs by using quantum chemical molecular dynamics and density functional theory calculations. We propose a dangling bond (DB) diffusion model as an alternative to the SiH<jats:sub>3</jats:sub> diffusion model, which is in conflict with first-principles calculation results and does not match the experimental evidence. In our model, DBs diffuse rapidly along an upper layer consisting of Si-H<jats:sub>3</jats:sub> sites and then migrate from the upper layer to a lower layer consisting of Si-H sites. The subsequently incident SiH<jats:sub>3</jats:sub> radical is then adsorbed onto the DB in the lower layer, producing two-dimensional growth. We find that DB diffusion appears analogous to H diffusion and can explain the reason why the layer-by-layer growth occurs.</jats:p>

Topics

• density
• impedance spectroscopy
• theory
• molecular dynamics
• Silicon
• density functional theory
• two-dimensional
• chemical vapor deposition