Competing reactions of existing Ni silicide and Ni or Si induced by thermal annealing and MeV Si ion beam mixing

The main results indicated that the existing silicides preferentially react with Ni layer, and that there are pronounced differences of Ni silicide phase transition between thermal annealing and MeV Si ion beam mixing, even though the mixing was performed in radiation enhanced diffusion regime. The results can be explained in terms of the heat of silicide formation and surface energy change. Two MeV He⁺ RBS and TEM were used to obtain the reacted layer composition and epitaxial orientation, respectively. Also glancing angle Co K_α X-ray diffraction was utilized to identify phase formation.