Crystal Structure of Titanium Silicide
Titanium Silicide (TiSi2) is a semiconductor material composed of silicon and titanium atoms. TiSi2 is widely used in the Very Large Scale Integrated Circuits (VLSI) industry, the aerospace industry, shipbuilding, medical, and jewellery manufacturing. In the microelectronics industry, it is commonly used in the C54 phase.
The crystal structure of Titanium Silicide is shown below: TiSi2 has a face-centred orthorhombic structure (oF24) with 24 atoms in a single cell. The figure also shows the close neighbours of the two components. Each titanium atom is surrounded by 4 titanium and 10 silicon atoms, while the silicon atom is surrounded by 5 titanium and 9 silicon atoms. Therefore, it is possible for both elements to diffuse on their respective sublattices as long as the corresponding vacancies exist. the fact that the growth of the TiSi2 phase layer is mainly due to the diffusion of silicon proves that the vacancies exist mainly on the silicon sublattice.
