Independent determination of composition and relaxation of partly pseudomorphically grown Si-Ge layers on silicon by a combination of standard x-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy measurements

Abstract

The concentration of Ge and the relaxation of partly pseudomorphically grown thin SiGe layers on Si can be found independently by a combination of standard x-ray double-crystal diffractometry (DCD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). DCD and TEM determine the lattice constant variations of the netplanes parallel and perpendicular to the surface from the angular distance between substrate and layer peak and from the average distance of misfit dislocations or the distance of Moiré fringes, respectively. The method is demonstrated for three samples with low, medium, and high Ge content.