Compound semiconductor

The increasing market demand for high-performing (opto)-electronic, high- power, high- frequency devices is driving today’s compound semiconductor industry to address new challenges. GaN and SiC are the materials of choice for high-power electronics. GaAs- based VCSELs are widely used for facial recognition in mobile phones, while GaN technology has revolutionized the LED lightening and high- frequency HEMT devices. The development of thin crystalline films with tailored optical and electrical properties, the continuous improvement of high-volume production processes, and enhanced quality management are all necessary to increase yield and control the costs of such devices. X-ray metrology is an ideal, proven tool to help the industry realize these goals.

Metrology tools based on X-ray techniques (XRD, XRR, and XRF) have been proven to be reliable and powerful. No other technique offers a unique combination of benefits – non-destructive measurement, accuracy, precision, and absolute analysis for the ex-situ investigation of epitaxial layers, heterostructures, and superlattice systems.

High-precision ultrafast analysis of compound semiconductor wafers

Since the early days, Malvern Panalytical has worked in close collaboration with the compound semiconductor industry to turn XRD and XRF into ‘backbone’ metrology tools. Knowing and understanding the analytical problems of our customers helps us offer efficient and automated control solutions for R&D through to volume semiconductor production.

X'Pert3 (X'Pert3 MRD and X'Pert3 MRD XL) is an XRD platform for high-resolution rocking curve, X-ray reflectivity, and ultrafast reciprocal map (URSM) analysis. It provides absolute and accurate information on crystal growth parameters such as material composition, film thickness, grading profile, phase, and the interface quality. Crystalline quality parameters such as mosaicity and defect density can also be estimated from such measurements. In addition, an MRD platform can also be used for high-resolution topographic imaging of defects in substrates and thin films. The instrument can be used both in research and production environment. In the production process, it can be combined with automatic wafer loading.
XRF (2830 ZT) gives thickness and composition information for a wide range of thin films, with contamination and dopant levels and surface uniformity.