Accurate Measurement of Orientation and Strain in nanostructures – AMOS

The AMOS project is constructed around three mature diffraction techniques (micro-Laue-X-ray diffraction, EBSD and NBED) that can measure simultaneously orientation, phase and strain in submicronic structures. Recent developments - only achieved by a few laboratories in the world and especially by some partners of this project - have shown the potential powers of these techniques. The three techniques have been selected because they cover different lateral resolution ranges and because they have slightly different and common approaches: comparing and discussing the techniques should benefit to everyone and for some applications, especially in microelectronics, it is vital to have data at different scales. More generally in order to build efficient devices, it is vital to determine the exact structure (orientation and phase) of the device but also the strain (and so stress) as strain can greatly change the properties of devices or destabilize the structure of devices.
The aims of the AMOS project are thus to (A1) develop (A2) benchmark and (A3) apply these 3 diffraction techniques for measuring the local orientations and strains in components of future nanodevices in the field of microelectronics and new energy technologies.
The 3 techniques will be developed, for instance by installing new detectors or mirrors in X-ray or by using better microscopes in NBED. To achieve the benchmark goal, two kinds of samples will be studied: simple test structures where strain and orientation are well known (these structures will be included in task T1) and a selection of real devices that are grouped in two categories and form two other tasks : (T2) nanostructures used in microelectronics and (T3) nanostructures used in new energy applications. Four laboratories of this project (SIMAP, INAC, SMS and LETI) have developed state of the art software and tools to achieve the measure of either strain or orientation. These partners will work in collaboration with makers of nanostructures, STmicroelectronics and LITEN, that will be 2 other partners. Deep collaborations with growers of these nanostructures will be realised in order to extract from the experimental analysis as much information as possible. The final goal of this project is really to demonstrate that our selection of diffraction techniques can improve our understanding of materials and help in optimising the realisation of the selected new devices. Main studied topics will be (T2.1) Polycrystalline copper line interconnections (in particular understanding what is the mechanism of degradation by electromigration) (T2.2) 3D device integration (T3.1) Lithium batteries and (T3.2) SOFC cells.