Synthesis and applications of 18O standards for nuclear reaction analysis

A new method to synthesize 18O standard samples to be used in nuclear reaction analyses is proposed and investigated. This method consists of obtaining a Si18O2 film on a Si substrate using a natural abundance SiO2 film as a passivation layer to prevent the isotopically enriched film to be exposed to the atmosphere and possibly degraded by it. For that, sequential oxidation steps are performed followed by a controlled etching in aqueous hydrofluoric acid. Details of these steps are discussed as well as the stability of the synthesized samples. Applications using these standard samples in the field of alternative semiconductors to Si (SiC and Ge), used in micro and nanoelectronics are also presented.