Depth profiling of dopants implanted in Si using the synchrotron radiation based high‐resolution grazing emission technique

Abstract

We report on the surface‐sensitive grazing emission X‐ray fluorescence technique combined with synchrotron radiation excitation and high‐resolution detection to realize depth‐profile measurements of Al‐implanted Si wafers. The principles of grazing emission measurements as well as the benefits offered by synchrotron sources and wavelength‐dispersive detection setups are presented. It is shown that the depth distribution of implanted ions can be extracted from the dependence of the X‐ray fluorescence intensity on the grazing emission angle with nanometer‐scale precision provided that an analytical function describing the shape of the depth distribution is assumed beforehand. If no a priori assumption is made, except a bell shaped form for the dopant distribution, the profile derived from the measured angular distribution is found to reproduce quite satisfactorily the depth distribution of the implanted ions. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.