Nucleation and growth kinetics in semiconductor chemical vapor deposition - art. no. 041302

We have studied the kinetics of nucleation and growth during Si/Si(100)-(2 x 1) homoepitaxy by ultrahigh vacuum chemical vapor deposition from SiH4, e mploying scanning tunneling microscopy and comparative rate equation simula tions of the growth processes. Island formation in this highly complex syst em, in the presence of mobile hydrogen and other metastable SiHx species, i s analyzed and compared to molecular-beam epitaxy growth and predictions fr om established rate equation theory. The deviations from classical theory c an be understood by taking into account the kinetics of the SiH4 dissociati on cascade thar leads to epitaxial Si growth.