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The direct interpretability of atomic resolution Z-contrast images obtained from a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) makes this imaging technique particularly powerful for the analysis of interfaces and defects in semiconductor materials and devices. In this paper, the principles of the technique are outlined and representative examples of its use are presented. In particular, we show the use of Z-contrast imaging to determine the polarity of a CdTe film grown on a Si substrate, the atomic structures of stacking faults and threading dislocation cores in GaN, and the atomistic structure of an ohmic metal/semiconductor contact of Au/GaAs.
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We report ab initio calculations designed to explore the relative energetics of different interface bonding structures. We find that, for Si (001), abrupt (no suboxide layer) interfaces generally have lower energy because of the surface geometry and the softness of the Si-O-Si angle. However, two energetically degenerate phases are possible at the nominal interface layer, so that a mix of the two is the likely source of the observed suboxide and dangling bonds. In principle, these effects may be avoidable by low-temperature deposition. In contrast, the topology and geometry of SiC surfaces is not suitable for abrupt interfaces.
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Reversible conductance transitions are demonstrated on the molecular scale in a complex of 3-nitrobenzal malononitrile and 1, 4-phenylenediamine, by application of local electric field pulses. Both macroscopic and local current-voltage (I/V) measurements show similar electrical bistability behavior. The mechanism of the electrical bistability is discussed.
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We report atomic resolution Z-contrast scanning transmission electron microscopy images that reveal the incorporation of I atoms in the form of helical chains inside single-walled carbon nanotubes. Density functional calculations and topological considerations provide a consistent interpretation of the experimental data. Charge transfer between the nanotube walls and the I chains is associated with the intercalation.
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Core-electron excitation spectra are used widely for structural and chemical analysis of materials, but interpretation of the near-edge structure remains unsettled, especially for semiconductors. For the important Si L(2,3) edge, there are two mutually inconsistent interpretations, in terms of effective-mass excitons and in terms of Bloch conduction-band final states. We report ab initio calculations and show that neither interpretation is valid and that the near-edge structure is in fact dominated by short-range electron-hole interactions even though the only bound excitons are effective-mass-like.
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We show that in the limit of a large objective (probe-forming) aperture, relevant to a spherical aberration corrected microscope, the Z-contrast image of a zone-axis crystal becomes an image of the 1s Bloch states. The limiting resolution is therefore the width of the Bloch states, which may be greater than that of the free probe. Nevertheless, enormous gains in image quality are expected from the improved contrast and signal-to-noise ratio. We present an analytical channeling model for the thickness dependence of the Z-contrast image in a zone-axis crystal, and show that, at large thicknesses, columnar intensities become proportional to the mean square atomic number, Z(2).
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: Convergent-beam electron diffraction and Z-contrast imaging are used to study oxygen-associated defects, flat inversion domain boundaries, dislocations, and interfaces in sintered AlN ceramics. The structures of these defects are directly derived from atomic-resolution Z-contrast images. The flat inversion domain boundaries contain a single Al-O octahedral layer and have a stacking sequence of.bAaB-bAc-CaAc., where -cAb- indicates the single octahedral layer. The expansion at the flat inversion domain boundaries is measured to be 0.06 (+/-0.02) nm. The interfaces between 2H- and polytypoid-AlN are found to be also inversion domain boundaries but their stacking sequence differs from that of the flat inversion domain boundaries.
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In this paper, we discuss the application of the maximum entropy method to atomic resolution Z-contrast images acquired in a scanning transmission electron microscope. Z-contrast is an incoherent imaging technique, and can be described as a convolution between an object function (the real-space map of the columnar scattering cross-section to high angles) and a point spread function (the effective electron probe). As such, we show that the technique is ideally suited to maximum entropy analysis which can, given an electron probe distribution, retrieve the 'most likely' Z-contrast object function. Using both simulated and experimentally acquired data, we explore the capabilities of maximum entropy analysis when applied to atomic resolution Z-contrast images, drawing conclusions on both the range of applicability of the technique and the nature of the retrieved crystal structures. Ultimately, we show the way in which the combination of Z-contrast imaging with maximum entropy analysis can be used to yield important information on unexpected atomic structures.