Development and Synchrotron‐Based Characterization of Al and Cr Nanostructures as Potential Calibration Samples for 3D Analytical Techniques

Abstract

The continuous and aggressive scaling in semiconductor technology results in the integration of increasingly complex 3D architectures and new materials. The realization of these downscaled 3D structures requires also further improvement in 3D characterization techniques. In this work, a potential route to improve the accuracy and reliability of the quantitative analysis of 3D nano-devices is investigated. 3D organic and inorganic reference nanostructures with dimensions and structural ordering resembling those utilized in industrial applications are fabricated and characterized in detail. The 3D organic nanostructures are fabricated exploiting the selfassembly capability of di-block copolymers. Subsequent deposition of a thin Al film lead to the formation and realization of nanostructured Al. In addition, different inorganic nanostructures are fabricated using electron beam lithography. The various nanostructures are characterized with respect to their dimensions as well as composition using various analytical techniques namely reference-free grazing incidence X-ray fluorescence, grazing incidence small angle X-ray scattering, scanning electron microscopy, and spectroscopic ellipsometry. status solidi physica a Di-Block Copolymers www.pss-a.com

Simultaneous Dimensional and Analytical Characterization of Ordered Nanostructures

“…It should also be noted, that one can of course also apply the scanning‐free GEXRF technique to randomly ordered nanostructures. As shown for GIXRF, [ 42 ] this simplifies the required reconstruction but it is expected to provide less dimensional discrimination capability as there is no azimuthal angle dependence of the fluorescence signals for disordered structures.…”

“…Further details about the fabrication procedure can be found in ref. [42]. As these nanostructures are provided on a reasonably large area, they were also characterized using the reference‐free GIXRF technique (further details and results of these experiments can be found in ref.…”

Recent Advances in Sequential Infiltration Synthesis (SIS) of Block Copolymers (BCPs)

“…Finally, morphological properties at the nanoscale can be studied through X-ray scattering (XRS) methods that display scattered photon intensities as a function of the momentum transfer Q ( ). Particularly, GISAXS, operated in grazing-incidence mode and analyzing small-angle scattering, is not new to the BCPs community and has been largely applied to study the nanoscale morphology of BCPs templates [ 70 , 71 ].…”

Grazing Emission X‐Ray Fluorescence: Novel Concepts and Applications for Nano‐Analytics

“…In the case of well‐ordered periodic distributions of particles or structures with lateral and vertical dimensions in the range of few tens to hundreds of nanometers and periodicities in the same range, such as line gratings or periodically repeating identical surface structures, GIXRF measurements showed a sensitivity of the angular intensity profile to the azimuthal orientation of the periodical arrays, [ 94,148 ] as is exemplarily shown in Figure 10 . This class of samples has until recently not been considered for GIXRF and GEXRF investigations such that novel modeling, computationally demanding approaches are required which take into consideration the surface distribution pattern in terms of height, width, and periodicity in particular.…”