R. Pretorius et al., EVALUATION OF ANOMALIES DURING NICKEL AND TITANIUM SILICIDE FORMATIONUSING THE EFFECTIVE HEAT OF FORMATION MODEL, Materials chemistry and physics, 36(1-2), 1993, pp. 31-38
The effective heat of formation model allows heats of formation to be
calculated as a function of the concentration of the reactants at the
growth interface. The effective concentration is taken to be the conce
ntration of the liquidus minimum for the relevant binary system. Using
this model, the anomalous and contradictory results for initial forma
tion of titanium silicide phases are ascribed to the two eutectics at
14 and 84 at.% silicon (both at 1330 degrees C) for the Ti-Si binary s
ystem. The native oxide layer usually present on silicon surfaces and
the affinity of Ti for oxygen further affect the effective concentrati
on, thereby adding to the contradictory experimental results that have
been found. In the Ni-Si system our measurements show that a sufficie
ntly high concentration of oxygen in amorphous silicon can lead to for
mation of NiSi instead of Ni2Si, which is normally the first phase to
form. This observation, as well as the formation of NiSi2 as the first
phase in the presence of diffusion barriers, is also explained in ter
ms of the effective heat of formation model.