Quantitative analysis of HOLZ line splitting in CBED patterns of epitaxially strained layers

Florent Houdellier (1) , Christian Roucau (1) , L. Clement (2) , J.L. Rouvière (2) , Marie-José Casanove (1)

1 CEMES - Centre d'élaboration de matériaux et d'études structurales
2 LEMMA - Laboratoire d'Etude des Matériaux par Microscopie Avancée

A SiGe layer epitaxially grown on a silicon substrate is experimentally studied by convergent beam electron diffraction (CBED) experiments and used as a test sample to analyse the higher-order Laue zones (HOLZ) line splitting. The influence of surface strain relaxation on the broadening of HOLZ lines is confirmed. The quantitative fit of the observed HOLZ line profiles is successfully achieved using a formalism particularly well-adapted to the case of a -dependent crystal potential ( being the zone axis). This formalism, based on a time-dependent perturbation theory approach, proves to be much more efficient than a classical Howie–Whelan approach, to reproduce the complex HOLZ lines profile in this heavily strained test sample.

Domaines: Physique Quantique [quant-ph]; Physique des Hautes Energies - Expérience [hep-ex]; Optique [physics.optics]; Physique des accélérateurs [physics.acc-ph]; Electromagnétisme; Matériaux; Optique / photonique; Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP]

Florent Houdellier, Christian Roucau, L. Clement, J.L. Rouvière, Marie-José Casanove. Quantitative analysis of HOLZ line splitting in CBED patterns of epitaxially strained layers. Ultramicroscopy, 2006, 106 (10), pp.951 - 959. ⟨10.1016/j.ultramic.2006.04.011⟩. ⟨hal-01707838⟩