Publication details

X-Ray Nano-Diffraction on Epitaxial Crystals

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Authors

MEDUŇA Mojmír FALUB Claudiu Valentin ISA Fabio CHRASTINA Daniel KREILIGER Thomas ISELLA Giovanni TABOADA Alfonso NIEDERMANN Philippe VON KÄNEL Hans

Year of publication 2014
Type Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source Quantum Matter
MU Faculty or unit

Central European Institute of Technology

Citation
Web http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/asp/qm/2014/00000003/00000004/art00002
Doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1166/qm.2014.1127
Field Solid matter physics and magnetism
Keywords defect-free; epitaxial ge-crystals; lattice mismatch; si substrates; thermal expansion mismatch; x-ray nanodiffraction
Description The concept of growing epitaxial Ge and SiGe crystals onto tall Si pillars may provide a means for solving the problems associated with lattice parameter and thermal expansion coefficient mismatch, i.e., dislocations, wafer bowing and cracks. For carefully tuned epitaxial growth conditions the lateral expansion of crystals stops once nearest neighbors get sufficiently close. We have carried out scanning nano-diffraction experiments at the ID01 beam-line of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble on the resulting space-filling arrays of micron-sized crystals to assess their structural properties and crystal quality. Elastic relaxation of the thermal strain causes lattice bending close to the Si interface, while the dislocation network is responsible for minute tilts of the crystals as a whole. To exclude any interference from nearest neighbors, individual Ge crystals were isolated first by chemical etching followed by micro-manipulation inside a scanning electron microscope. This permitted us to scan an X-ray beam, focused to a spot a few hundreds of nm in size, along the height of a single crystal and to record three-dimensional reciprocal space maps at chosen heights. The resolution limited width of the scattered X-ray beams reveals that the epitaxial structures evolve into perfect single crystals sufficiently far away from the heavily dislocated interface.
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