Friedel'S law breakdown and interpretation of stacking fault images in tetrahedral semiconductors

Abstract

Images of <11> oriented crystals with diamond structure (i.e. C,Si,Ge) are dominated by white spot contrast which, depending on thickness and defocus, can correspond to either atom-pair columns or tunnel sites. Olsen and Spence have demonstrated a method for identifying the correspondence which involves the assumed structure of a stacking fault and the preservation of point-group symmetries by correctly aligned and stigmated images. For an intrinsic stacking fault, a two-fold axis lies on a row of atoms (not tunnels) and the contrast (black/white) of the atoms is that of the {111} fringe containing the two-fold axis. The breakdown of Friedel's law renders this technique unsuitable for the related, but non-centrosymmetric binary compound sphalerite materials (e.g. GaAs, InP, CdTe). Under dynamical scattering conditions, Bijvoet related reflections (e.g. (111)/(111)) rapidly acquire relative phase differences deviating markedly from thin-crystal (kinematic) values, which alter the apparent location of the symmetry elements needed to identify the defect.