Thin film molecular beam epitaxy

Thin-film technology is replete with acronyms and several of the main ones you will encounter are listed in Table 28.1. Molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) is the only acronym that assumes a crystalline structure and alignment of the thin film. Molecular-beam evaporation would be much better, especially when used to grow amorphous films ... 

The growth of a well ordered fullerene monolayer, by means of molecular beam epitaxy, has been used for the controlled nucleation of single crystalline thin films. The quality and stability of molecular thin films has been shown... 

Silicon Epitaxy. A critical step ia IC fabricatioa is the epitaxial depositioa of sdicoa oa an iategrated circuit. Epitaxy is defined as a process whereby a thin crystalline film is grown on a crystalline substrate. Silicon epitaxy is used ia bipolar ICs to create a high resistivity layer oa a low resistivity substrate. Most epitaxial depositioas are doae either by chemical vapor depositioa (CVD) or by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) (see Thin films). CVD is the mainstream process. 

Epitaxial crystal growth methods such as molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) have advanced to the point that active regions of essentially arbitrary thicknesses can be prepared (see Thin films, film deposition techniques). Most semiconductors used for lasers are cubic crystals where the lattice constant, the dimension of the cube, is equal to two atomic plane distances. When the thickness of this layer is reduced to dimensions on the order of 0.01 )J.m, between 20 and 30 atomic plane distances, quantum mechanics is needed for an accurate description of the confined carrier energies (11). Such layers are called quantum wells and the lasers containing such layers in their active regions are known as quantum well lasers (12). 

Electrical Properties. Generally, deposited thin films have an electrical resistivity that is higher than that of the bulk material. This is often the result of the lower density and high surface-to-volume ratio in the film. In semiconductor films, the electron mobiHty and lifetime can be affected by the point defect concentration, which also affects electromigration. These effects are eliminated by depositing the film at low rates, high temperatures, and under very controUed conditions, such as are found in molecular beam epitaxy and vapor-phase epitaxy. 

Optoelectronics is a relatively new and fast-growing industry with many applications. Thin-film processes, such as reactive sputtering, molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE), and particularly MOCVD, play a major part in their production. Equipment and materials are similar to those used in the semiconductor industry and many companies manufacture both types of products. In fact the distinction between the two areas is often blurred. Statistics generally do not single out optoelectronics as such and, for that reason, it is difficult to define the scope of the industry accurately. 

Another evaporation technique is molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). MBE produces extremely pure and very thin films with abrupt composition changes and is being considered for extremely exacting electronic and optoelectronic applications. PI However, the deposition rate is very slow and the process is still considered experimental. 

Moustakas, T., Molecular Beam Epitaxy Thin Film Growth and... 

Electrocatalytic activity of supported metal particles has been investigated on surfaces prepared in an ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) molecular beam epitaxy system (DCA Instruments) modified to allow high throughput (parallel) synthesis of thin-film materials [Guerin and Hayden, 2006]. The system is shown in Fig. 16.1, and consisted of two physical vapor deposition (PVD) chambers, a sputtering chamber, and a surface characterization chamber (CC), all interconnected by a transfer chamber (TC). The entire system was maintained at UHV, with a base pressure of 10 °mbar. Sample access was achieved through a load lock, and samples could be transferred... 

The primary methodologies for forming thin-film materials with atomic level control are molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) [4-9], vapor phase epitaxy (VPE) [10-12], and a number of derivative vacuum based techniques [13]. These methods depend on controlling the flux of reactants and the temperature of the substrate and reactants. 

MBE (molecular beam epitaxy), which involves epitaxial growth of thin films on either the same material as substrate (homoepitaxial) or a lattice-matched substrate (heteroepitaxial) the heated substrate reacts with a molecular beam of compounds containing the constituent elements of the semiconductor as well as any dopants the resultant film is essentially a single crystal slow growth rates produce films from a few nanometers thick to at most several hundred nanometers that have very high purity and controlled levels of dopants. 

Pure, crystalline, thin films of magnetite (111) can be grown on AI2O3 (001) or MgO(OOOl) substrates by oxygen plasma assisted, molecular beam epitaxy the substrate temperature should not exceed 250 °C in order to avoid interfacial reactions and diffusion of Mg in the magnetite structure (Kim et al., 1997). 

An outgrowth of prior thin-film technology and of basic surface science research has been molecular beam epitaxy—the MBE formation... 

Different techniques to deposit thin layers of material have already been described spin and dip coating in Section 7.5.2, evaporation, sputtering, and molecular beam epitaxy in Section 8.3. Film thicknesses are in the 20 nm to 10 /zm range. 

Thin semiconductor films (and other nanostructured materials) are widely used in many applications and, especially, in microelectronics. Current technological trends toward ultimate miniaturization of microelectronic devices require films as thin as less than 5 nm, that is, containing only several atomic layers [1]. Experimental deposition methods have been described in detail in recent reviews [2-7]. Common thin-film deposition techniques are subdivided into two main categories physical deposition and chemical deposition. Physical deposition techniques, such as evaporation, molecular beam epitaxy, or sputtering, involve no chemical surface reactions. In chemical deposition techniques, such as chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and its most important version, atomic layer deposition (ALD), chemical precursors are used to obtain chemical substances or their components deposited on the surface. 

ZnO thin films can be prepared by a variety of techniques such as magnetron sputtering, chemical vapor deposition, pulsed-laser deposition, molecular beam epitaxy, spray-pyrolysis, and (electro-)chemical deposition [24,74]. In this book, sputtering (Chap. 5), chemical vapor deposition (Chap. 6), and pulsed-laser deposition (Chap. 7) are described in detail, since these methods lead to the best ZnO films concerning high conductivity and transparency. The first two methods allow also large area depositions making them the industrially most advanced deposition techniques for ZnO. ZnO films easily crystallize, which is different for instance compared with ITO films that can... 

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