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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik
O 70: Nanostructures at Surfaces: Other Aspects
O 70.6: Poster
Wednesday, March 9, 2016, 18:15–20:30, Poster A
Quantifying the contrast mechanisms of a scanning electron microscope by an integrated AFM system — •Frank Hitzel1, Nils Anspach1, Kerstin Sempf2, and Peter Gnauck3 — 1Semilab Semiconductor Physics Laboratory Co. Ltd., Budapest, Hungary — 2Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems, Dresden, Germany — 3Carl Carl Zeiss Microscopy GmbH, Oberkochen, Germany
The Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) is a powerful tool to obtain information about sample surface properties like morphology, material type, crystal orientation, conductivity and much more. At low acceleration voltages, secondary electrons are influenced by many different effects, and the resulting images represent a mixture of different contrast sources, which often cannot be distinguished by the SEM related methods themselves.
In such cases, the combined SEM/AFM tool from Carl Zeiss and Semilab goes a step further: Due to the different imaging mechanism, the AFM is able to distinguish between real topography, work function, and conductivity and obtains absolute values for each of them. Especially for samples with strong morphology, the combined SEM/AFM is the only tool permitting full electrical characterization of areas, which have to be located by the detection mechanism of the SEM.
We will present examples in which this unique approach has led to a much better understanding of the investigated sample properties. Examples from the fields of ceramics (SiC), organic electronics, Li batteries and semiconductors will be shown.