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Strain Measurement in Semiconductor Heterostructures by Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2012

Knut Müller ,
Andreas Rosenauer ,
Marco Schowalter ,
Josef Zweck ,
Rafael Fritz  and
Kerstin Volz
Knut Müller*
Affiliation:
Institut für Festkörperphysik, Universität Bremen, Otto-Hahn-Allee 1, 28359 Bremen, Germany
Andreas Rosenauer*
Affiliation:
Institut für Festkörperphysik, Universität Bremen, Otto-Hahn-Allee 1, 28359 Bremen, Germany
Marco Schowalter
Affiliation:
Institut für Festkörperphysik, Universität Bremen, Otto-Hahn-Allee 1, 28359 Bremen, Germany
Josef Zweck
Affiliation:
Institut für Experimentelle und Angewandte Physik, Universität Regensburg, Universitätsstraße 31, 93040 Regensburg, Germany
Rafael Fritz
Affiliation:
Institut für Experimentelle und Angewandte Physik, Universität Regensburg, Universitätsstraße 31, 93040 Regensburg, Germany
Kerstin Volz
Affiliation:
Materials Science Center and Faculty of Physics, Philipps Universität Marburg, Hans-Meerwein-Straße, 35032 Marburg, Germany
*
**Corresponding authors. E-mail: mueller@ifp.uni-bremen.de; rosenauer@ifp.uni-bremen.de
**Corresponding authors. E-mail: mueller@ifp.uni-bremen.de; rosenauer@ifp.uni-bremen.de
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Abstract

This article deals with the measurement of strain in semiconductor heterostructures from convergent beam electron diffraction patterns. In particular, three different algorithms in the field of (circular) pattern recognition are presented that are able to detect diffracted disc positions accurately, from which the strain in growth direction is calculated. Although the three approaches are very different as one is based on edge detection, one on rotational averages, and one on cross correlation with masks, it is found that identical strain profiles result for an InxGa1−xNyAs1−y/GaAs heterostructure consisting of five compressively and tensile strained layers. We achieve a precision of strain measurements of 7–9·10−4 and a spatial resolution of 0.5–0.7 nm over the whole width of the layer stack which was 350 nm. Being already very applicable to strain measurements in contemporary nanostructures, we additionally suggest future hardware and software designs optimized for fast and direct acquisition of strain distributions, motivated by the present studies.

Keywords

strain measurementelectron diffractionTEMCBEDSTEMsemiconductors
Type
Techniques and Equipment Development
Information
Microscopy and Microanalysis , Volume 18 , Issue 5 , October 2012 , pp. 995 - 1009
Copyright
Copyright © Microscopy Society of America 2012

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Footnotes

†

A. Rosenauer and K. Müller contributed to the present work in equal part and share first-authorship.

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