FORMATION OF A BURIED LAYER OF ALUMINIUM NITRIDE BY HIGH DOSE N2+ IMPLANTATION INTO ALUMINIUM

Aluminium films with various thickness between 700 nm and 1μm were deposited on Si (100) substrates, and 400 keV N₂⁺ ions with doses ranging from 4.3×10¹⁷ to 1.8×10¹⁸ N/cm² were implanted into the alu-minium films on silicon, Rutherford Backscattering (RBS) and channeling, secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS), Fourier transform infrared spectra (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and spreading resistance probes (SRP) were used to characterize the synthesized aluminium nitride. The experiments showed that when the implantation dose was higher than a critical dose N_c, a buried stoichiometric AlN layer with high resistance was formed, while no apparent AlN XRD peaks in the as-implanted samples were observed; however, there was a strong AlN(100) diffraction peak appearing after annealing at 500 ℃ for 1h. The computer program, Implantation of Reactive Ions into Silicon (IRIS), has been modified and used to simulate the formation of the buried AlN layer as N₂⁺ is implanted into aluminium. We find a good agreement between experimental measurements and IRIS simulation.