Atom Probe Tomography on Semiconductor Devices

Abstract

In this paper, state‐of‐the‐art Atom Probe Tomography (APT) on industrial semiconductor products is reviewed to explore their device physics and to develop an understanding of atomic‐scale interfaces in them. Different semiconductor devices, such as Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs), High‐Electron‐Mobility Transistors (HEMTs), Field‐Effect Transistors (FETs), Metal‐Oxide‐Semiconductor Field‐Effect Transistors (MOSFETs), Static or Dynamic Random Access Memory (SRAM or DRAM) and solar cells, have been reviewed in light of their surface morphologies, chemical compositions, dopant distributions, grain boundaries and interface characteristics. The APT approach allows for the further optimization of device techniques, which are suggested for better performance.

Atom probe tomography of size‐controlled phosphorus doped silicon nanocrystals

“…Intrinsic, as well as heavily group‐V doped Si NCs in a SiO 2 matrix have been investigated using atom probe tomography (APT) . Nevertheless, also for lowly doped QDs APT is the method of choice due to its capacity to image the 3D structure and chemical composition at the atomic scale . While the successful incorporation of P atoms into larger (∼4 nm) Si NCs was recently reported , the doping of very small Si NCs (typically 2 nm in diameter) is not yet understood.…”

Probing structural and chemical evolution in (AlxGa1−x)2O3 using atom probe tomography: A review

“…The nanoscale characterization is crucial because microstructure and chemical features of semiconductors primarily dictate the localized physical and chemical entities, and therefore dictate the device efficiencies. These features include tiny precipitates or elemental segregations, impurity diffusions, interface quality, dopant profile distribution, local composition fluctuations, as well as a different form of structural or crystal defects, including lattice mismatch, grain boundaries, point defects, and dislocations [45]. The necessity and difficulty of studying these structural features has motivated the development of several high-resolution microscopic techniques such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM), scanning transmission Reprinted with permission from Ref.…”

Probing structural and chemical evolution in (AlxGa1−x)2O3using atom probe tomography: A review

“…Such limitations have led to the development of an advanced characterization technique, atom probe tomography (APT), to fill the information void. APT combined with field ion microscopy (FIM) and time-of-flight (TOF) spectroscopy [55] is a powerful characterization technique that enables direct 3D visualization of complex structure and chemistry at the atomic level with very high sensitivity [10 atomic parts per million (appm)] [45,56] as well as near-atomic spatial and chemical resolution [57]. Over the last decade, APT has been widely used to study the atomic-level structural chemistry including local elemental segregation/clustering, layer homogeneity, interface RMS roughness, adatoms diffusions across the interfaces in wide bandgap semiconductors, and their heterostructures to explain local chemical and physical properties that directly manipulate the corresponding electrical/optical devices [18,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69].…”