Film Crystallinity

The Bruker JVX7300LSI system is widely used to measure crystallinity of polycrystalline films in advanced memory, such as W films in NAND and dialectic film stacks (such as ZAZ) in DRAM.

By monitoring the intensity, position and width of key diffraction peaks using high intensity beams and advanced detectors, the crystallinity, phase, texture and grain size can be kept under control.

S Channel and I Channel

For small spot measurements of test structures on patterned wafers, the S channel can be added, which has a spot size of 50µm x 50 µm at the sample.  Phase and orientation monitoring on ultra-thin crystalline films is enabled with the optional I channel for in-plane XRD measurements.

The D8 DISCOVER Plus is Bruker's flagship X-ray Diffraction solution for the analysis of ultra-thin amorphous, polycrystalline and epitaxial films.
By applying Coplanar-Diffraction (left) and Non-Coplanar Diffraction (right), the lattice parameter and the crystallite size can be determined with unrivalled accuracy perpendicular as well as parallel to the sample surface. 
In the presented case of a 5 nm thick Mo film, a high anisotropy in lattice parameter and crystallite size is observed: The vertical crystallite size equals the film thickness, whereas the in-plane crystallite size is more than twice as large (11.4 nm).

Completely new approaches in memeory design are being investigated in detail by energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy in TEM.