Ion–surface interactions during vapor phase crystal growth by sputtering, MBE, and plasma-enhanced CVD: Applications to semiconductors

Abstract

The effects of low-energy particle bombardment of growing films during vapor phase epitaxy are considered in some detail. Ion bombardment plays an important and sometimes dominant role in controlling the growth kinetics and physical properties of films deposited by glow discharge and ion beam sputter deposition, molecular beam epitaxy using accelerated dopants, and plasma- assisted chemical vapor deposition. Ion–surface interaction effects, including trapping, sputtering, preferential sputtering, and collisional mixing, are used to interpret and model experimental results concerning the effects of low-energy particle bombardment on nucleation, film growth, enhanced diffusion at interfaces, and elemental incorporation probabilities. Finally, recent results on the growth of unique single-crystal metastable semiconducting alloys are discussed.