Crystal-induced effects at crystal/amorphous interfaces: The case ofSi3N4/SiO2

Abstract

We reveal the presence of atomic short-range ordering at the interface between crystalline ␤-Si 3 N 4 and amorphous SiO 2 using aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy. We show that the first atomic layers of the amorphous SiO 2 film reconstruct taking on the crystalline form of Si 3 N 4 . Furthermore, we find that there is a nonuniform interatomic mixing of oxygen and nitrogen at different atomic sites at the interface. The work provides a direct look at the atomic structure of crystal/amorphous interfaces composed of light elements.

Crystalline-Vitreous Interface in Two Dimensional Silica

“…The transitional structures were investigated by a large variety of theoretical [1,4,6,8,14,16,17,19] and experimental methods [2,3,5,[9][10][11][12][13]15,18,20,21]. However, the interface between crystalline and vitreous silica has not been addressed so far.…”

“…A vast amount of studies was published concerning crystalline-amorphous (c-a) interfaces of different, mostly tetrahedrally coordinated materials, including c-Ge=a-Ge [1], c-Si=a-Ge [2,3], c-Si=a-Si [1,[4][5][6][7], c-Al 2 O 3 =a-CaSiO 3 [8], c--Si 3 N 4 =a-SiO 2 [9], and c-Si=a-SiO 2 [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21], the last example being an important interface in semiconductor technology. The transitional structures were investigated by a large variety of theoretical [1,4,6,8,14,16,17,19] and experimental methods [2,3,5,[9][10][11][12][13]15,18,20,21].…”

Well-Ordered Molybdenum Oxide Layers on Au(111): Preparation and Properties

“…A vast amount of studies was published concerning crystalline-amorphous (c-a) interfaces of different, mostly tetrahedrally coordinated materials, including c-Ge=a-Ge [1], c-Si=a-Ge [2,3], c-Si=a-Si [1,[4][5][6][7], c-Al 2 O 3 =a-CaSiO 3 [8], c--Si 3 N 4 =a-SiO 2 [9], and c-Si=a-SiO 2 [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21], the last example being an important interface in semiconductor technology. The transitional structures were investigated by a large variety of theoretical [1,4,6,8,14,16,17,19] and experimental methods [2,3,5,[9][10][11][12][13]15,18,20,21]. However, the interface between crystalline and vitreous silica has not been addressed so far.…”

Theory for Annular Bright Field STEM Imaging

“…Atomic-resolution ABF imaging has rapidly been taken up since its recent proposal , having already been applied to imaging oxygen atoms in grain boundary structures (Hojo et al, 2010;Findlay et al, 2011a), to demonstrating a degree of crystalline order extending into the amorphous region in a Si 3 N 4 /SiO 2 interface (Walkosz et al, 2010), to direct imaging of lithium in candidate lithium battery materials (Oshima et al, 2010;Gu et al, 2011;Huang et al, 2011aHuang et al, , 2011b, and to imaging of hydrogen inside a crystalline environment (Findlay et al, 2010b;Ishikawa et al, 2011). The s-state model seems insufficient to explain the form of the contrast for extremely light elements like helium and lithium, and a detailed understanding of the image formation mechanism for these cases is, at the time of writing, yet to be found.…”