Metal silicides formed by means of thermal annealing processes are employed as contact materials in microelectronics. Control of the structure of silicide/silicon interfaces becomes a critical issue when the device characteristic size is reduced below a few tens of nanometers. Here we report on silicide clustering occurring within the channel of PtSi/Si/PtSi Schottky barrier transistors. This phenomenon is investigated through atomistic simulations and low-temperature resonant tunneling spectroscopy. Our results provide evidence for the segregation of a PtSi cluster with a diameter of a few nanometers from the silicide contact. The cluster acts as metallic quantum dot giving rise to distinct signatures of quantum transport through its discrete energy states.
@article{arxiv.1407.5413,
title = {PtSi Clustering In Silicon Probed by Transport Spectroscopy},
author = {Massimo Mongillo and Panayotis Spathis and Georgios Katsaros and Riccardo Rurali and Xavier Cartoixa and Pascal Gentile and Silvano de Franceschi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1407.5413},
year = {2014}
}