Transmission channeling study of the Au/Si(100) interface

The Au/Si (100) interface has been studied by the transmission channeling technique. The results show that at the very beginning the deposited Au atoms are partially registered with the 〈100〉 axis in the substrate crystal and are partially randomly distributed across the 〈100〉 channel. In addition to the Au–Si atom interaction, the Au–Au interaction already plays an important role in the submonolayer region, which causes the Au atoms to be more and more randomly distributed as monolayer coverage is approached. Cluster formation is a possible mechanism for the interface growth in this region. Through the transmission Si surface peak, evidence has been found that room‐temperature intermixing takes place at ∼4 ML Au coverage. The observed initiation threshold appears to favor an electron screening model over a diffusion model to explain room‐temperature Au–Si intermixing.