Depth and lateral resolution of laser-assisted atom probe microscopy of silicon revealed by isotopic heterostructures

Abstract

We report on a direct comparison of the depth and lateral resolution of the current state-of-the-art laser-assisted atom probe microscopy analysis of single-crystalline silicon. The isotopic heterostructures composed of 5–15 nm-thick S28i- and S30i-enriched layers were measured to reconstruct three-dimensional images of S28i and S30i stable isotope distributions in the surface perpendicular and parallel directions for the analysis of the depth and lateral resolution, respectively. The decay length experimentally obtained for the lateral direction is only about twice longer than in the direction, meaning that the lateral resolution is higher than obtained by secondary ion mass spectrometry.

High‐resolution secondary ion mass spectrometry depth profiling of nanolayers

“…The measured leading and decay lengths were of the same order or better than published to-date corresponding data obtained with commercial state-of-the-art SIMS instrumentation using cluster/molecular or low energy O 2 + /Cs + ion sources, or with laser-assisted atom probe tomography. [9,10,12,13,17,38,39] As mentioned above, the first 24 Mg peak of the stack was not resolved from the surface constituent, which caps the structure. In order to resolve in the depth profile the 24 Mg peak corresponding to the topmost ALD layer from the surface contamination, we decreased the duration of the individual ion milling cycles and proportionally increased their number.…”

Isotope engineering of silicon and diamond for quantum computing and sensing applications

“…[43] Some electron doublequantum dots were fabricated using the strained silicon. [44] Other isotopically controlled silicon low-dimensional structures, typically grown by MBE, [45][46][47][48] have been employed, predominantly for diffusion [49][50][51][52] and amorphization [53] studies.…”

Interface sharpening in miscible Ni/Cu multilayers studied by atom probe tomography

“…Accurate analysis of multilayer interfaces with APT is nowadays well established 5 even with isotope multilayers. 10,11 The goal of this work is to verify the kinetic interface sharpening 6,7 by a truly atomistic method, by which the interface diffuseness can be clearly separated from any other phenomena. We chose the Ni/Cu system since it is miscible at the 773 K annealing temperature, well known to have an asymmetry in partial mobilities, and representing one of the earliest demonstrations of a Kirkendall-shift 12 and a nonFickian dissolution kinetics, 13 too.…”