Practical aspects of strain measurement in thin SiGe layers by (004) dark-field electron holography in Lorentz mode

Dark-field electron holography (DFEH) is a powerful transmission electron microscopy technique for mapping strain with nanometer resolution and high precision. However the technique can be difficult to set up if some practical steps are not respected. In this article, several measurements were performed on thin Si(1-x)Gex layers using (004) DFEH in Lorentz mode. Different practical aspects are discussed such as sample preparation, reconstruction of the holograms and interpretation of the strain maps in terms of sensitivity and accuracy. It was shown that the measurements are not significantly dependent on the preparation tool. Good results can be obtained using both FIB and mechanical polishing. Usually the most important aspect is a precise control of the thickness of the sample. A problem when reconstructing (004) dark-field holograms is the relatively high phase gradient that characterises the strained regions. It can be difficult to perform reconstructions with high sensitivity in both strained and unstrained regions. Here we introduce simple methods to minimise the noise in the different regions using a specific mask shape in Fourier space or by combining several reconstructions. As a test, DFEH was applied to the characterization of eight Si(1-x)Gex samples with different Ge concentrations. The sensitivity of the strain measured in the layers varies between 0.08% and 0.03% for spatial resolutions of 3.5-7 nm. The results were also compared to finite element mechanical simulations. A good accuracy of ±0.1% between experiment and simulation was obtained for strains up to 1.5% and ±0.25% for strains up to 2.5%.