Imaging of oxide precipitates in silicon with ballistic phonons

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Ballistic phonons were generated at low temperatures in nearly single-crystalline silicon by scanning the specimen surface with an electron beam. At the opposite sample surface the ballistic phonons were detected with two small-area bolometers placed at different locations. For a Si specimen which had been annealed for 150 h at 1050 °C, the ballistic phonon image contained fine structure which could be attributed to oxide precipitates. Comparing the phonon images obtained with the two bolometers, we concluded that the structural inhomogeneities affecting the ballistic phonon propagation were located far from the specimen surface scanned by the electron beam. With these experiments a new principle of three-dimensional tomography based on ballistic phonons has been demonstrated.

This publication has 2 references indexed in Scilit: