Wetting and contact interaction of semconductor oxide materials Ga2O3, In2O3, ZnO with metallic melts in vacuum

Semiconductor oxide materials such as gallium, indium and zinc oxides play an important role in a development and production of a variety of electronic devices. Experimental studies of these materials allow to define, for example energetic or other physical parameters of the devices created and also to improve existing technologies of their production, metallization and joining of electrocontacts by way of brazing which require additional wetting studies. It should be noted that data on wetting of mentioned oxides by metals are practically absent in literature. Thus a detailed experimental study of the interfacial interaction, adhesion and wetting of Ga2O3, In2O3 and ZnO oxide materials with some pure metal melts (Ga, In, Sn, Au,Ge, Ag, Cu) in vacuum was performed by the sessile drop method using photo- and video- fixing including temporal and temperature dependencies of contact angles. It was found that pure metals don't wet powdery pressed specimens of Ga and In oxides in the temperature range studied and vary in a rather narrow range. For ZnO system the significant effect of experiment temperature and hold-up time on the values of contact angles for some metals (Ga, Ge, Sn, Cu) is observed. For example wetting angles for Ga change from above 90 degrees at low temperatures up to 49 and full spreading at 1173⎯1373 K. This effect may be attributed to the activation of chemical reactions, change of oxide stabilities at high temperatures at the interface. Last metals can be used as adhesive-active additions to base brazing alloy. Keywords: gallium, indium, zinc oxides, semiconductor, wetting, contact interaction, metal melt.