| X-ray scattering and absorption techniques utilizing synchrotron radiation have been used to study a variety of multilayer semiconductors. The angular-dependent x-ray scattering at grazing incidence angles (grazing incidence x-ray scattering, GIXS) provides structural information of interfaces in these materials, such as rms interfacial roughness, cross- and lateral-correlation lengths, etc. Long-range order structures in material are probed by large-angle scattering (x-ray diffraction), in which strain and lattice constant as well as crystallinity of the epilayers are measured. Local structural variations in materials including local bond length, coordination number, and local disorder are obtained quantitatively by examining the modulation in the x-ray absorption spectrum some 40 eV above the absorption edge (extended x-ray absorption fine structure, EXAFS). Materials studied in the present work are SiGe/Si heterostructures, MnAs/GaAs ferromagnetic-semiconductor films, solar cell films, ZnSe-based II-VI semiconductor thin films, InGaAs/GaAs and GaAs/AlAs superlattices. Results obtained have shown (i) evidence for strain-induced surface/interface morphology variations in SiGe/Si heterostructures, (ii) template-dependent microstructures in MnAs/GaAs, (iii) changes in interface structures for films of different formations in solar cell films, (iv) differences between samples prepared by different epitaxial growth methods in II-VI semiconductor films, (v) observation of lateral structural ordering in one of the InGaAs/GaAs superlattices, (vi) differences in interfacial microstructures between MBE-grown samples with different interrupts in GaAs/AlAs superlattices. Most of all, x-rays are found to be a very useful nondestructive tool for probing microscopic structures in various multilayer semiconductor materials. |
