IMPROVING TRANSMISSION ELECTRON-MICROSCOPY CHARACTERIZATION OF SEMICONDUCTORS BY MINIMIZING SAMPLE PREPARATION ARTIFACTS

Techniques employed for the preparation of transmission electron micro scopy (TEM) samples can introduce artifacts that obscure subtle detail in the materials being studied. Traditional semiconductor sample prep aration techniques rely heavily on ion milling, which leaves amorphous layers on ion milled surfaces and some intermixing across interfaces, thus degrading the TEM images of these samples. Experimental results of the extent of this amorphization and intermixing are presented for silicon-based semiconductor samples, and methods to minimize these eff ects are suggested. These methods include variations in ion milling pa rameters that reduce the extent of the artifacts, and improvements in the small-angle cleavage technique that eliminate these artifacts comp letely.