Surface enhanced Raman scattering to study surface contaminants on semiconductors

This work shows that by using surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) it is possible to observe and char- acterize surface species due to contamination onto semiconductor materials. We detected the presence of surface contaminants on semiconductors by coating the surface with an Ag island film. By means of this technique we were able to observe the Raman bands of these contaminants, enhanced through the surface enhanced scattering mechanism. These results demonstrate the high sensitivity of SERS and suggest surface contaminants can be detected by SERS, even if they are present at very low concentration. This extension of SERS spectroscopy to semiconductor materials is important for developing SERS as a new surface sensitive probe in material science. Ó 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.