Optical metrology for nanowires grown with molecular beam epitaxy

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingArticle in proceedingsResearchpeer-review

Semiconductor nanowires are important materials for quantum transport experiments and are used in research on qubits. Extended arrays of nanowires can be grown bottom-up by Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE). The full process involves several steps. When fabricating nanowires, a common practice is to follow a well-established recipe and only characterize the finalized materials. If the final wires are found to be flawed, the process must be repeated with new parameters. It is therefore desirable to have a characterization method to monitor the process before and after each fabrication step. Conventional characterization techniques such as SEM are time-consuming and, in some cases, damage the samples, e.g. before and after an electron beam lithography process. Scatterometry is fast, accurate, non-destructive and is already used in the semiconductor industry. In this work, it is demonstrated that the imaging scatterometry technique is capable of monitoring the MBE fabrication process of InAs-nanowire arrays during the different process steps. Relevant parameters such as thin film thickness, hole depth, and diameter, etc., are found with nm precision for a macroscopic area in a few minutes. Using this approach, we demonstrate that errors can be caught early in the process and ultimately save resources while assuring a high quality of the final material.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationQuantum Dots, Nanostructures, and Quantum Materials : Growth, Characterization, and Modeling XVII
EditorsDiana L. Huffaker, Holger Eisele
Number of pages8
PublisherSPIE - International Society for Optical Engineering
Publication date2020
Article number1129111
ISBN (Electronic)9781510633452
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020
EventQuantum Dots, Nanostructures, and Quantum Materials: Growth, Characterization, and Modeling XVII 2020 - San Francisco, United States
Duration: 5 Feb 2020 → …

Conference

ConferenceQuantum Dots, Nanostructures, and Quantum Materials: Growth, Characterization, and Modeling XVII 2020
LandUnited States
BySan Francisco
Periode05/02/2020 → …
SponsorThe Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)
SeriesProceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
Volume11291
ISSN0277-786X

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© COPYRIGHT SPIE. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

    Research areas

  • Metrology, Molecular Beam Epitaxy, Nanowires, Scatterometry

ID: 271555014