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    Dislocation-free Ge nano-crystals via pattern independent selective Ge heteroepitaxy on Si nano-tip wafers
    (London : Nature Publishing Group, 2016) Niu, Gang; Capellini, Giovanni; Schubert, Markus Andreas; Niermann, Tore; Zaumseil, Peter; Katzer, Jens; Krause, Hans-Michael; Skibitzki, Oliver; Lehmann, Michael; Xie, Ya-Hong; von Känel, Hans; Schroeder, Thomas
    The integration of dislocation-free Ge nano-islands was realized via selective molecular beam epitaxy on Si nano-tip patterned substrates. The Si-tip wafers feature a rectangular array of nanometer sized Si tips with (001) facet exposed among a SiO2 matrix. These wafers were fabricated by complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) compatible nanotechnology. Calculations based on nucleation theory predict that the selective growth occurs close to thermodynamic equilibrium, where condensation of Ge adatoms on SiO2 is disfavored due to the extremely short re-evaporation time and diffusion length. The growth selectivity is ensured by the desorption-limited growth regime leading to the observed pattern independence, i.e. the absence of loading effect commonly encountered in chemical vapor deposition. The growth condition of high temperature and low deposition rate is responsible for the observed high crystalline quality of the Ge islands which is also associated with negligible Si-Ge intermixing owing to geometric hindrance by the Si nano-tip approach. Single island as well as area-averaged characterization methods demonstrate that Ge islands are dislocation-free and heteroepitaxial strain is fully relaxed. Such well-ordered high quality Ge islands present a step towards the achievement of materials suitable for optical applications.
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    Fast scatterometric measurement of periodic surface structures plasma-etching processes
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2018) Klesse, Wolfgang Matthias; Rathsfeld, Andreas; Groß, Claudine; Malguth, Enno; Skibitzki, Oliver; Zealouk, Lahbib
    To satisfy the continuous demand of ever smaller feature sizes, plasma etching technologies in microelectronics processing enable the fabrication of device structures with dimensions in the nanometer range. In a typical plasma etching system a plasma phase of a selected etching gas is activated, thereby generating highly energetic and reactive gas species which ultimately etch the substrate surface. Such dry etching processes are highly complex and require careful adjustment of many process parameters to meet the high technology requirements on the structure geometry. In this context, real-time access of the structures dimensions during the actual plasma process would be of great benefit by providing full dimension control and film integrity in real-time. In this paper, we evaluate the feasibility of reconstructing the etched dimensions with nanometer precision from reflectivity spectra of the etched surface, which are measured in real-time throughout the entire etch process. We develop and test a novel and fast reconstruction algorithm, using experimental reflection spectra taken about every second during the etch process of a periodic 2D model structure etched into a silicon substrate. Unfortunately, the numerical simulation of the reflectivity by Maxwell solvers is time consuming since it requires separate time-harmonic computations for each wavelength of the spectrum. To reduce the computing time, we propose that a library of spectra should be generated before the etching process. Each spectrum should correspond to a vector of geometry parameters s.t. the vector components scan the possible range of parameter values for the geometrical dimensions. We demonstrate that by replacing the numerically simulated spectra in the reconstruction algorithm by spectra interpolated from the library, it is possible to compute the geometry parameters in times less than a second. Finally, to also reduce memory size and computing time for the library, we reduce the scanning of the parameter values to a sparse grid.