Recombination and Charge Collection at Nickel Silicide Precipitates in Silicon Studied by Electron Beam‐Induced Current

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Nickel disilicide () has detrimental effects on many devices such as transistors or solar cells if it comes as a precipitate in the active device region. As thin‐film electrical contacts, however, it is frequently incorporated into devices due to its low resistivity and the almost‐perfect lattice match with silicon, allowing for epitaxial growth. Herein, electron beam‐induced current, EBIC, is used to study excess carrier recombination and charge collection at platelets with diameters of several 10 μm and thicknesses of only a few (111) silicide lattice planes. To arrive at such structures, a special preparation protocol is developed consisting of a two‐step cooling procedure and electrical contacting using in situ EBIC/focused ion beam (FIB) on precipitates structurally characterized by transmission electron microscopy. The experimental results provide evidence that the atomically thin silicide layers embedded in silicon have properties similar to bulk in terms of the Schottky barrier height and electric conductivity.