Ammonia modification of oxide-free Si(111) surfaces

- 0.2 M ammonia in dioxane shows surface oxidation and low ammonia chemisorption.
- Dioxane helps stabilize ammonium salt formation on more polar surface terminations.
- Liquid ammonia differs in chemisorption amounts depending on surface termination.
- Hydrogen formation observed for ammonia reaction on Cl-terminated Si(111) surfaces.

Amination of surfaces is useful in a variety of fields, ranging from device manufacturing to biological applications. Previous studies of ammonia reaction on silicon surfaces have concentrated on vapor phase rather than wet chemical processes, and mostly on clean Si surfaces. In this work, the interaction of liquid and vapor-phase ammonia is examined on three types of oxide-free surfaces - passivated by hydrogen, fluorine (1/3 monolayer) or chlorine - combining infrared absorption spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and first-principles calculations. The resulting chemical composition highly depends on the starting surface; there is a stronger reaction on both F- and Cl-terminated than on the H-terminated Si surfaces, as evidenced by the formation of Si-NH2. Side reactions can also occur, such as solvent reaction with surfaces, formation of ammonium salt by-products (in the case of 0.2 M ammonia in dioxane solution), and nitridation of silicon (in the case of neat and gas-phase ammonia reactions for instance). Unexpectedly, there is formation of Si-H bonds on hydrogen-free Cl-terminated Si(111) surfaces in all cases, whether vapor phase of neat liquid ammonia is used. The first-principles modeling of this complex system suggests that step-edge surface defects may play a key role in enabling the reaction under certain circumstances, despite the endothermic nature for Si-H bond formation.

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