Stress-driven oxidation chemistry of wet silicon surfaces

Abstract

The formation of a hydroxylated native oxide layer on Si(001) under wet conditions is studied by means of first principles molecular dynamics simulations. Water molecules are found to adsorb and dissociate on the oxidised surface leading to rupture of Si-O bonds and producing reactive sites for attack by dissolved dioxygen or hydrogen peroxide molecules. Tensile strain is found to enhance the driving force for the dissociative adsorption of water, suggesting that similar reactions could be responsible for environmentally-driven sub-critical crack propagation in silicon.

References in corpus (1)

• Stress Development and Impurity Segregation during Oxidation of the Si(100) Surface

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Development of a Classical Force Field for the Oxidised Si Surface: Application to Hydrophilic Wafer Bonding
• Water structuring and collagen adsorption at hydrophilic and hydrophobic silicon surfaces
• Chemisorption of water on the surface of silicon microparticles measured by DNP-enhanced NMR
• Stress Development and Impurity Segregation during Oxidation of the Si(100) Surface