TY - JOUR
T1 - Quantitative characterization of self-assembled coherent islands
AU - Liu, Chuan Pu
AU - Gibson, J. Murray
N1 - Funding Information:
This work is supported by the NSF focussed research group on ‘Naturally Patterned Nanostructures’ under grant number DMR #9705440. Samples characterization by TEM was carried out in the center for Microanalysis of Materials, University of Illinois, which supported by the US Department of Energy under Grant No. DEFG02-96-ER45439. We also thank to Drs T.I. Kamins and R.S. Williams in HP; Dr W.L. Henstrom, B. Chow and T. Spila at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for providing the samples analyzed here.
PY - 2003/1/22
Y1 - 2003/1/22
N2 - We report on plan-view transmission electron microscopy techniques, by which the size, the actual shape and the strain of a coherent island in semiconductor heterostructures can be measured accurately. The bright-field suppressed-diffraction imaging condition where no strong diffracted beam is excited in the sample provides reliable size measurement as well as the detailed shape and aspect ratio. An exact two-beam diffraction condition is employed to produce the strain contrast of a coherent island and the corresponding fringes can be easily utilized to measure the average strain relaxation occurring during island evolution. We also propose an off-axis z contrast technique for the unambiguous determination of composition profile in an island. Finally examples of application of these techniques on the characterization of Ge coherent islands on Si(1 0 0) substrates are demonstrated.
AB - We report on plan-view transmission electron microscopy techniques, by which the size, the actual shape and the strain of a coherent island in semiconductor heterostructures can be measured accurately. The bright-field suppressed-diffraction imaging condition where no strong diffracted beam is excited in the sample provides reliable size measurement as well as the detailed shape and aspect ratio. An exact two-beam diffraction condition is employed to produce the strain contrast of a coherent island and the corresponding fringes can be easily utilized to measure the average strain relaxation occurring during island evolution. We also propose an off-axis z contrast technique for the unambiguous determination of composition profile in an island. Finally examples of application of these techniques on the characterization of Ge coherent islands on Si(1 0 0) substrates are demonstrated.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0037460309&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=0037460309&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/S0040-6090(02)00896-9
DO - 10.1016/S0040-6090(02)00896-9
M3 - Conference article
AN - SCOPUS:0037460309
SN - 0040-6090
VL - 424
SP - 2
EP - 8
JO - Thin Solid Films
JF - Thin Solid Films
IS - 1
T2 - proceedings of the 1st Ineternational Conference on Materials
Y2 - 1 July 2001 through 6 July 2001
ER -