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  Angermann, H.; Gref, O.; Stegemann, B.: Effect of wet-chemical substrate smoothing on passivation of ultrathin-SiO2/n-Si(111) interfaces prepared with atomic oxygen at thermal impact energies. Central European Journal of Physics 9 (2011), p. 1472-1481

Abstract:
Ultrathin SiO2 layers for potential applications in nano-scale electronic and photovoltaic de-vises were prepared by exposure to thermalized atomic oxygen under UHV conditions. Wet-chemical substrate pre-treatment, layer deposition and annealing processes were applied to improve the electronic Si/SiO2 interface properties. This favourable effect of optimized wet-chemical pre-treatment can be preserved during the subsequent oxidation. The corresponding atomic-scale analysis of the electronic interface states after substrate pre-treatment and the subsequent silicon oxide layer formation is performed by field-modulated surface photovolt-age (SPV), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and spectroscopic ellipsometry in the ultra-violet and visible region (UV-VIS-SE).