Co Si 2 growth on Si(001) by reactive deposition epitaxy: Effects of high-flux, low-energy ion irradiation

Co Si 2 layers, <40nm thick, were grown on Si(001) by reactive deposition epitaxy (RDE) in which Co was deposited at 700°C by magnetically unbalanced ultrahigh vacuum magnetron sputtering. X-ray diffraction pole figures and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) reveal that the layers, which exhibit a cube-on-cube epitaxial relationship with the substrate, (001)CoSi2‖(001)Si and [100]CoSi2‖[100]Si, contain fourfold symmetric {111} twinned domains oriented such that {221}CoSi2‖(001)Si and ⟨110⟩CoSi2‖[110]Si. We demonstrate that high-flux low-energy (EAr+=9.6eV) Ar+ ion irradiation during deposition dramatically increases the area fraction fu of untwinned regions from 0.17 in films grown under standard magnetically balanced conditions in which the ratio JAr+∕JCo of the incident Ar+ to Co fluxes is 1.4 to 0.72 with JAr+∕JCo=13.3. TEM analyses show that the early stages of RDE CoSi2(001) film growth proceed via the Volmer-Weber mode with independent nucleation of both untwinned and twinned islands. Increasing JAr+∕JCo results in larger values of both the number density and area of untwinned with respect to twinned islands. The intense Ar+ ion bombardment creates additional low-energy adsorption sites that favor the nucleation of untwinned islands while collisionally enhancing Co surface mobilities which, in turn, increases the probability of itinerant Co adatoms reaching these sites.