Analysis of quadrupole splitting of multiple Fe sites intermixed in Si(111) with Mössbauer spectroscopy

The iron silicide has various interesting phases both fundamentally and technologically, which have acquired much attention to date. Iron silicides are often fabricated on a Si substrate by a solid phase epitaxy method, and the initial stage of intermixing of iron atoms with substrate Si is of crucial importance for silicide fabrication, which remains to be clarified. Here, we have investigated the initial stage of the iron-silicide formation before crystallization with Mössbauer spectroscopy suited to characterization of magnetic and chemical properties of 57Fe atoms in materials. The sample was prepared by deposition of 57Fe of 1 nm on a Si(111) surface at 450 K. Conventional Mössbauer spectroscopy in the energy domain revealed presence of two iron sites with similar quadrupole splits and isomer shifts, which hampered complete analysis of this system. By combining the time-domain spectroscopy using polarized synchrotron radiation, we have separately analyzed the quadrupole splits and isomer shifts for the two iron sites. By using the theoretical simulation, furthermore, we successfully reproduced the experimentally observed time spectrum of the nuclear resonant scattering on the assumption that iron atoms randomly occupy the substitutional sites for Si at the initial stage of intermixing before crystallization of an iron silicide.