3D Atomic Mapping of Interfacial Roughness and Its Spatial Correlation Length in Sub-10 nm Superlattices

The interfacial abruptness and uniformity in heterostructures are critical to control their electronic and optical properties. With this perspective, this work demonstrates the three-dimensional (3D) atomic-level mapping of the roughness and uniformity of buried epitaxial interfaces in Si/SiGe superlattices with a layer thickness in the 1.5-7.5 nm range. Herein, 3D atom-by-atom maps were acquired and processed to generate isoconcentration surfaces highlighting local fluctuations in content at each interface. These generated surfaces were subsequently utilized to map the interfacial roughness and its spatial correlation length. The analysis revealed that the root-mean-squared roughness of the buried interfaces in the investigated superlattices is sensitive to the growth temperature with a value varying from 0.17 ± 0.02 to 0.26 ± 0.03 nm in the temperature range of 500-650 °C. The estimated horizontal correlation lengths were found to be 8.11 ± 0.5 nm at 650 °C and 10.09 ± 0.6 nm at 500 °C. Additionally, reducing the growth temperature was found to improve the interfacial abruptness, with a 30% smaller interfacial width is obtained at 500 °C. This behavior is attributed to the thermally activated atomic exchange at the surface during the heteroepitaxy. Finally, by testing different optical models with increasing levels of interfacial complexity, it is demonstrated that the observed atomic-level roughening at the interface must be accounted for to accurately describe the optical response of Si/SiGe heterostructures.