High Resolution Electron Microscopy of Semiconductor Defects

Author(s):  
J.C.H. Spence

Any attempt to study the relationship between the electronic and atomic struc ture of isolated defects in semiconductors by high resolution electron microscopy must deal with the following difficulties: (i) The limited point reso lution of modern TEM instruments, which has fallen by about 1Å from 3.8Å to 2.8Å (with tilt) over the last decade. This is still not sufficient to resolve the individual atomic columns in any semiconductor. (ii) The fundamental difficulties in obtaining both high spatial resolution structural information and high energy resolution spectroscopic data from the same, isolated, defect. (iii) The considerable difficulties in extracting chemical, or atomic number information from electron scattering and imaging experiments with high spatial resolution. Among other problems, the separation of composition variation effects from those of thickness is an important problem. Some of our recent approaches to these problems are outlined below.

Author(s):  
J.M. Howe ◽  
R. Gronsky

The technique of high-resolution electron microscopy (HREM) is invaluable to the materials scientist because it allows examination of microstructural features at levels of resolution that are unobtainable by most other methods. Although the structural information which can be determined by HREM and accompanying image simulations has been well documented in the literature, there have only been a few cases where this technique has been used to reveal the chemistry of individual columns or planes of atoms, as occur in segregated and ordered materials.


2000 ◽  
Vol 639 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philomela Komninou ◽  
Joseph Kioseoglou ◽  
Eirini Sarigiannidou ◽  
George P. Dimitrakopulos ◽  
Thomas Kehagias ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTThe interaction of growth intrinsic stacking faults with inversion domain boundaries in GaN epitaxial layers is studied by high resolution electron microscopy. It is observed that stacking faults may mediate a structural transformation of inversion domain boundaries, from the low energy types, known as IDB boundaries, to the high energy ones, known as Holt-type boundaries. Such interactions may be attributed to the different growth rates of adjacent domains of inverse polarity.


1996 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 1880-1890 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zenji Horita ◽  
David J. Smith ◽  
Minoru Furukawa ◽  
Minoru Nemoto ◽  
Ruslan Z. Valiev ◽  
...  

High-resolution electron microscopy was used to examine the structural features of grain boundaries in Al–1.5% Mg and Al–3% Mg solid solution alloys produced with submicrometer grain sizes using an intense plastic straining technique. The grain boundaries were mostly curved or wavy along their length, and some portions were corrugated with regular or irregular arrangements of facets and steps. During exposure to high-energy electrons, grain boundary migration occurred to reduce the number of facets and thus to reduce the total boundary energy. The observed features demonstrate conclusively that the grain boundaries in these submicrometer-grained materials are in a high-energy nonequilibrium configuration.


Author(s):  
J. R. FRYER

It is shown that it is possible to obtain structural information from small (<100 nm) phthalocyanine crystals by using crystallographic direct phasing methods applied to electron diffraction data. This technique is both quantitative and does not suffer from the difficulties associated with high-resolution electron microscopy. Structural information has been obtained from both tetra- and octa chloro-copper phthalocyanines, and the results compared with the hydrogenated and perchloro members of the series.


2005 ◽  
Vol 482 ◽  
pp. 39-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin J. Hÿtch ◽  
Jean-Luc Putaux ◽  
Jean-Michel Pénisson

The geometric phase technique (GPA) for measuring the distortion of crystalline lattices from high-resolution electron microscopy (HRTEM) images will be described. The method is based on the calculation of the “local” Fourier components of the HRTEM image by filtering in Fourier space. The method will be illustrated with a study of an edge dislocation in silicon where displacements have been measured to an accuracy of 3 pm at nanometre resolution as compared with anisotropic elastic theory calculations. The different components of the strain tensor will be mapped out in the vicinity of the dislocation core and compared with theory. The accuracy is of the order of 0.5% for strain and 0.1° for rigid-body rotations. Using bulk elastic constants for silicon, the stress field is determined to 0.5 GPa at nanometre spatial resolution. Accuracy and the spatial resolution of the technique will be discussed.


1998 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 446-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zenji Horita ◽  
David J. Smith ◽  
Minoru Nemoto ◽  
Ruslan Z. Valiev ◽  
Terence G. Langdon

Submicrometer-grained (SMG) structures were produced in Cu and Ni using an intense plastic straining technique, and the grain boundaries and their vicinities were observed by high-resolution electron microscopy. The grain boundaries exhibited zigzag configurations with irregular arrangements of facets and steps, and thus they were found to be in a high-energy nonequilibrium state. A similar conclusion was reached earlier for SMG Al–Mg solid solution alloys which have much lower melting points than Cu and Ni, suggesting that nonequilibrium grain boundaries are a typical feature of metals processed by intense plastic straining.


1980 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.C.H. Spence ◽  
A. Olsen

ABSTRACTIt is not presently possible to resolve the individual atoms in any semiconductor by high resolution electron microscopy (HREM). However symmetry arguments may be used to allow near-atomic resolution lattice images to be interpreted in rare favorable cases. This method is applied to the problem of distinguishing shuffle and glide set partial dislocations in silicon. It is also proposed that two dimensional characteristic loss energy selected diffraction patterns be used to reveal the local symmetry about selected substitutional species implanted in semiconductor lattices.


1990 ◽  
Vol 183 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Pirouz ◽  
J. Yang

AbstractHigh resolution electron microscopy has been used to study the structure of the 3C/6H interface, Σ,=3 {111}and Σ.=3 {112}grain boundaries in 3C-SiC. In SiC, as in other compound semiconductors, anti-site bonds occur in a variety of defects. These are high energy bonds comparable to that of dangling bonds. But, while dangling bonds at the grain boundaries may be eliminated by reconstruction just as in elemental semiconductors, it may not be possible to avoid anti-site bonds.These problems are discussed for the Σ=3 {112} grain boundary, where the structures proposed for Ge and Si are used as starting models for SiC.


1998 ◽  
Vol 540 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. C. Nicol ◽  
M. L. Jenkins ◽  
M. A. Kirk

AbstractWe have studied by electron microscopy the copper-rich precipitates in an Fe-1.3wt%Cu model alloy irradiated with neutrons to doses of 8.61 × 10−3dpa and 6.3×10−2 dpa at a temperature of-270°C. In the lower dose material a majority (ca. 60%) of the precipitates visible in high-resolution electron microscopy were twinned 9R precipitates of size ∼ 2−4 nm, whilst ca. 40 % were untwinned. In the higher dose material, a majority (ca. 75%) of visible precipitates were untwinned although many still seemed to have a 9R structure. The average angle α between the herring-bone fringes in the twin variants was measured as 1250, not the 1290 characteristic of precipitates in thermally-aged and electron-irradiated material immediately after the bcc-→9R martensitic transformation. We argue that these results imply that the bcc-→9R transformation of small (< 4 nm) precipitates under neutron irradiation takes place at the irradiation temperature of 270°C rather than after subsequent cooling. Preliminary measurements showed that precipitate sizes did not depend strongly on dose, with a mean diameter of 3.4 ± 0.7 nm for the lower dose material, and 3.0 ± 0.5 rim for the higher dose material. This result agrees with the previous assumption that the lack of coarsening in precipitates formed under neutron irradiation is a consequence of the partial dissolution of larger precipitates by high-energy cascades.


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