A study of Ni‐Ge interdiffusion on GaAs using rapid thermal annealing with temperature standards

A new technique for probing rapid material interactions at low temperatures has been developed. Rapid thermal annealing at 200 and 250 °C is exploited as a temperature‐time probe to study the fast kinetics of Ni‐Ge and Ni‐Ge‐Au contact metallizations on GaAs. Temperature standards are employed to establish known reaction temperatures within −3 to +13 °C of nominal, while anneal times are limited to 30 s or less. Rutherford backscattering analysis of annealed samples indicate that Ge consumption obeys parabolic kinetics, most likely limited by Ni diffusion, consistent with the growth of a NixGe phase. An activation energy estimate ≊0.7 eV is shown to be consistent with the fast interdiffusion observed, which is attributed to a grain boundary mechanism. The presence of Au plays only a limited role in the reaction for the temperatures and times studied.

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