A proposed experiment to measure surface roughness in Si/SiO2 system

The adsorption of oxygen on clean cleaved (111) silicon surfaces has been investigated by high resolution electron spectroscopy (HRES), Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) and ellipsometry. Localized vibrations ($\text{h}\text{?}\text{ω = 94}$, 130 and 175 meV) which are related to the binding state band of oxygen are identified with HRES. AES measures the concentration of adsorbed atoms basically independent of their binding state while ellipsometry refers additionally to the optical properties of the adsorbed layer. The same adsorption kinetics was found with the three methods. Oxygen therefore adsorbs in a single likely molecular state. The sticking coefficient S increases exponentially with the surface step concentration. S is also enhanced by the presence of nude ion gauges. Depending on these parameters sticking coefficients between 2 × 10^?4 and 10^?1 have been obtained. This result might contribute to an explanation of the large differences in earlier works.