Open Journal of Applied Sciences, 2013, 3, 107-111 doi:10.4236/ojapps.2013.31015 Published Online March 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojapps) The Heat Treatment Effect on the Oxidation Rate of the Ge-Doped Si(100) Bashir Nedaee Shakarab 1 , Ali Baghizadeh 1 , Davoud Agha-Ali Gol 2 1 Department of Physics Ardabil Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ardabil, Iran 2 Van de Graaff Laboratory, Physics Department, Nuclear Science and Technology Research Institute, Tehran, Iran Email: nedaieshakarab@yahoo.com Received September 28, 2012; revised November 5, 2012; accepted November 13, 2012 ABSTRACT In this paper, the Si(100) substrate was implanted by Ge ions at different doses to study the effect of the preliminary heat treatment on the wet oxidized layer of the Si using Rutherford Backscattering Spectroscopy and Atomic Force Mi- croscopy. We found that the change of the silicon oxide thickness and its morphology under the influence of the Ge dopant is mostly dependent on the damaged surface layer of the Si substrate after ion implantation. By choosing differ- ent doses of the implantation and subsequent annealing process, we tried to get different level of the induced damage, enabled us to investigate the role of the pre-heating and subsequent recrystalization of the damaged substrate on the silicon oxidation process under the effect of the implanted Ge ions. By the determination of the effect of these parame- ters, we can better identify the optimal conditions of getting the oxide layer with proper thickness and morphology. Keywords: Ion Implantation; RBS; AFM; Oxidation; Annealing 1. Introduction Studying the mechanism of the growth of silicon dioxide at thermal ambient comes back to the famous work of Deal and Grove [1], which has been followed by the complementary studies on the role of common impurities in Si substrate like P, B, As, Ge and etc. as a part of the nowadays MOS devices and also to have damage engi- neering on materials applicable in silicon industries [2]. Among all the impurities have been used up to now, ger- manium has attracted much attention these years than others due to the growth of epitaxial layers of Si x Ge 1−x using different preparation methods like ion implantation and the fascinating properties of the grown mixed layer of the Ge and Si [3]. To fulfill the needs of silicon indus- tries, the oxidation of silicon after being implanted by Ge ions at varieties of doses and energies and even changing the oxidation conditions have been widely investigated [3-5]. However, no one seriously has attempted to study the role of the pre-heating on the oxidized silicon which is common in silicon processing after implantation to remove the created damage and re-crystallize the dam- aged layer. Recently, Dedyulin [6] paid attention to the influence of the defects on the dry oxidation of SiGe layer at different temperatures of the oxidation to model the oxidation growth mechanism according to the initial model of the Deal-Drove [6]. In this paper, the role of the induced damaged layer after ion implantation on the thickness and the roughness of the oxide layer by an- nealing the implanted samples at different temperatures have been studied using RBS and RBS-Channeling to get information on the thickness and re-crystallization proc- ess during the annealing and the Atomic Force Micro- copy to evaluate the roughness of the oxide’s surface. 2. Experiment The p-type Si single crystal substrates (100) with 1 - 15 Ω·cm resistivity have been chosen to be implanted by 1 and 3 × 10 16 atoms/cm 2 of 35 keV Ge ions at liquid ni- trogen temperature. The annealing and oxidation were done at the same furnace using a pure quartz tube and nitrogen gas flow for annealing and steam of hot water being kept at 95˚C [7]. The annealing temperatures were chosen in such a way we are sure for some samples we still have damaged layer. (More than 550˚C, we got al- most full damage recovery for our concerned doses of the implantation) RBS and RBS-Channeling were done at Van de Graaff Laboratory of Teharn, Iran using 2 MeV alpha particles directed normal to the surface of the sam- ples and detected at the scattering angle of 165˚. Veeco’s AutoProbe CP-Research AFM has been used to get morphological information on the surface of the oxides and estimation of the roughness at each experimental condition by scanning the 5 μm × 5 μm area with 512 pixels resolution. Copyright © 2013 SciRes. OJAppS