✍ Scribed by Bert Voigtländer
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
A scanning tunneling microscope (STM), capable of imaging during semiconductor growth, is described. The method (MBSTM) opens the possibility to follow the growth process of semiconductor molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) during growth. The ability of the microscope to access the evolution of the growth morphology down to the atomic level is demonstrated by the following results: In Si/Si(111) homoepitaxy, lateral growth of islands occurs along stripes of the width of a (7 × 7) unit cell. In Ge/Si(111) heteroepitaxy atomic layer-by-layer growth of Ge on Si(111) and the subsequent formation of three-dimensional (3D) islands are observed. During the subsequent growth of 3D islands, an inversion of the aspect ratio of islands indicates a transition from strained islands to islands with misfit dislocations.
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The engineering of advanced heterostructure and nanoscale semiconductor devices has made essential a detailed understanding of, and control over, the structure and properties of semiconductor materials and devices at the atomic to nanometer scale. Cross-sectional scanning tunneling microscopy provid