Ultra-low-temperature homoepitaxial growth of Sb-doped silicon

An ultra-low-temperature process for homoepitaxial growth of high-quality, surface-confined, Sb-doped silicon layers is presented. Non-equilibrium growth by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) is used to achieve dopant incorporation in excess of 2×1014 cm−2 in a thin, surface-confined layer. Sb surface segregation larger than expected from theoretical models was observed, in agreement with other experimental works. Furthermore, this work details an entirely low-temperature process (<450 °C) that can be applied to fully processed and aluminum-metallized silicon devices. One application of this process is the formation of a back-surface electrode for back-illuminated high-purity silicon imaging arrays.