Site-controlled formation of single Si nanocrystals in a buried SiO2 matrix using ion beam mixing.

For future nanoelectronic devices - such as room-temperature single electron transistors - the site-controlled formation of single Si nanocrystals (NCs) is a crucial prerequisite. Here, we report an approach to fabricate single Si NCs via medium-energy Si+ or Ne+ ion beam mixing of Si into a buried SiO2 layer followed by thermally activated phase separation. Binary collision approximation and kinetic Monte Carlo methods are conducted to gain atomistic insight into the influence of relevant experimental parameters on the Si NC formation process. Energy-filtered transmission electron microscopy is performed to obtain quantitative values on the Si NC size and distribution in dependence of the layer stack geometry, ion fluence and thermal budget. Employing a focused Ne+ beam from a helium ion microscope, we demonstrate site-controlled self-assembly of single Si NCs. Line irradiation with a fluence of 3000 Ne+/nm2 and a line width of 4 nm leads to the formation of a chain of Si NCs, and a single NC with 2.2 nm diameter is subsequently isolated and visualized in a few nanometer thin lamella prepared by a focused ion beam (FIB). The Si NC is centered between the SiO2 layers and perpendicular to the incident Ne+ beam.

Improving accuracy and precision of strain analysis by energy-filtered nanobeam electron diffraction.

This article deals with uncertainty in the analysis of strain in silicon nanoscale structures and devices using nanobeam electron diffraction (NBED). Specimen and instrument related errors and instabilities and their effects on NBED analysis are addressed using a nanopatterned ultrathin strained silicon layer directly on oxide as a model system. We demonstrate that zero-loss filtering significantly improves the NBED precision by decreasing the diffuse background in the diffraction patterns. To minimize the systematic deviations the acquired data were verified through a reliability test and then calibrated. Furthermore, the effect of strain relaxation by specimen preparation using a FIB is estimated by comparing profiles, which were acquired by analyzing slices of strained structures in a 220-nm-thick region of the sample (invasive preparation) and the entire strained nanostructures, which are embedded in a thicker region of the same sample (noninvasive preparation). Together with the random deviation, the corresponding systematic shift results in a total deviation of ∼1 × 10(-3) for NBED analyses, which is employed to estimate the measurement uncertainty in the thinner sample region. In contrast, the strain in the thick sample region is not affected by the preparation; the systematic shift reduces to a minimum, which improves the total deviation by ∼50%.

Elemental mapping of multilayered structures: a method to reconstruct 2D chemical maps from a set of 1D line scans.

We introduce a method to characterize the chemical distribution in nanostructures using STEM and affiliated spectroscopy techniques. The method is applicable to any nanostructure where the continuous layers of arbitrary geometry and dimensions can be identified. The key feature of the suggested approach is digital warping of the original STEM image into the quasi-1D image. The chemical profiles of high resolution and high signal-to-noise ratio can be extracted from the minimal set of the STEM spectroscopy data while minimizing material damage during acquisitions. Finally, the 2D chemical maps of the area of interest are reconstructed.

On the origin of HOLZ lines splitting near interfaces: multislice simulation of CBED patterns.

Splitting of HOLZ lines on CBED patterns is systematically observed at the proximity of interfaces and prevents local strain measurements by monitoring of line shifts. It was previously suggested that such splitting occurs due to interface-strain relaxation in thin TEM lamella. Here we confirm this model by dynamical simulation of CBED patterns using the multislice algorithm.