MeV ion beam irradiation has recently become an attractive process step in attaining increased applications in the solid-state device fabrication for preventing latch-up and for modifying interfaces and surfaces. The electrical characteristics of metal/Si contacts are of great importance for a variety of device applications. Strong and stable contacts have been obtained by means of ion beam treatment of the modified interface. It is, therefore, necessary to understand the mechanism responsible for modifying the interface properties of metal/Si contacts. The main mechanisms identified are interfacial compound formation (metal silicides), increased contact area and atomic mixing or sputtering. The goal of the present work is to understand the effects of MeV ion beam with its ion range much greater than the interface depth.

One of the main processes of MeV ion beam interaction at material interfaces is known as Ion Beam Mixing and such energetic ions are Swift Heavy Ion (SHI). SHI can induce significant modifications in thin film systems above a threshold value of electronic energy loss S_e, which varies considerably from metal to metal. The observed effects include, defect creation and intermixing at the interfaces, modification at surface and interface roughness’s, ion track formation etc. In thin film bilayers, the magnitude of S_e and ion fluence can be used as parameters for selectively modifying the surface/interface roughness or inter diffusion at the interfaces. To understand some of these aspects of SHI induced mixing phenomenon at Metal/Si interface and hence the compound formation is the main motivation of present work