Room-temperature codeposition growth technique for pinhole reduction in epitaxial CoSi2 on Si (111)

A solid phase epitaxy technique has been developed for the growth of CoSi2 films on Si (111) with no observable pinholes (103 cm−2 detection limit). The technique utilizes room-temperature codeposition of Co and Si in stoichiometric ratio, followed by the deposition of an amorphous Si capping layer and subsequent in situ annealing at 550–600 °C. CoSi2 films grown without the Si cap are found to have pinhole densities of 107–108 cm−2 when annealed at similar temperatures. A CF4 plasma etching technique was used to increase the visibility of the pinholes in the silicide layer. This plasma technique extends the pinhole detection resolution to 103 cm−2 and is independent of the pinhole size.