Strain Characterisation at the nm Scale of Deep Sub-Micron Devices by Convergent-Beam Electron Diffraction

摘要

The convergent beam electron diffraction (TEM/CBED) technique has been applied to 0.2 μm wide active stripes in STI structures for non volatile memories, which have been prepared for electrical characterisations. Details on the improved procedure to obtain the components of strain from experimental CBED patterns are given. With respect to the previous methods, this improvement includes the increase in spatial resolution by both reducing the projection effects, through a reduction in the specimen tilt angle, and increasing the acceleration voltage; moreover a newly developed software allows the strain tensor to be obtained in a semi-automatic way.