2005/01/31 by E. Tan, Eileen Tan, P. G. Mather +3 · 1 citation
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Diamond and Carbon-based Materials Research #Ion-surface interactions and analysis #Semiconductor materials and devices #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.71.161401
arxiv created 2005/02/23 · openalex publication_date 2005/04/14 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy data that show that the chemisorbed oxygen previously observed to be on the surface of thin AlOx layers formed by room temperature thermal oxidation is bound by oxygen vacancies in the oxide. Increasing the electric field across the oxide, either by overcoating with a metallic electrode, or by electron bombardment, drives this surface chemisorbed oxygen into the vacancy sites. Due to the low bonding energies of these oxygen sites, subsequent oxygen exposures draw these O^\ensuremath- ions back to the surface, reforming chemisorbed O2^\ensuremath-. Al∕AlOx∕Al tunnel junctions incorporating electron-bombarded AlOx barriers show a significant reduction in the low-frequency junction resistance noise level at 4.2\phantom\rule0.3em0exK.