The influence of physical and chemical factors upon thermal and radiation stability of TiN-GaAs and TiB/sub 2/-GaAs contacts

It has been well established that degradation of metal-semiconductor structures in the course of their operation under extreme conditions (high temperatures, strong electromagnetic field, radiation, etc.) is crucially affected by the mass transfer processes and by the nature of solid-phase interactions between the pairs of layers forming the contact. Under the influence of external factors, the structural and phase composition of the interface boundary change, and similarly changes the degree of local non-uniformity, impurity and defect composition of the subsurface region of the semiconductors, which results, eventually, into variations (degrading) of the electric and physical properties of the contacts. Nowadays, the search for structures with contacts metal-A/sup 3/B/sup 5/ which are stable and resistant against external effects tends to examine such metallic alloys and compounds which could markedly weaken the interdiffusion of metal-semiconductor layers. Among them, of particular interest are titanium borides and nitrides. The paper present a comparative study of TiB/sub 2/(TiN)-GaAs structures.