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Journal of Electron Microscopy Advance Access originally published online on November 22, 2008
Journal of Electron Microscopy 2009 58(1):15-19; doi:10.1093/jmicro/dfn024
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Japanese Society of Microscopy. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Contrast mechanism due to interface trapped charges for a buried SiO2 microstructure in scanning electron microscopy

Hai-Bo Zhang*, Wei-Qin Li and Dan-Wei Wu

Key Laboratory for Physical Electronics and Devices of the Ministry of Education, Department of Electronic Science and Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, People's Republic of China

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: hbzhang{at}mail.xjtu.edu.cn

We clarify the scanning electron microscopic contrast mechanism for imaging a buried SiO2 trench microstructure with interface trapped charges by simulating both electron scattering and transport. Here, the interface trapped charges make the SiO2 film more negatively charged and increase excess holes in the space charge distribution of the electron scattering region. The generated positive surface electric field thus redistributes some emitted secondary electrons and results in the dark contrast. This contrast mechanism is validated by comparing with experiments, and it may also provide an interesting approach for imaging and detecting deep interface trapped charges in insulating films.

Keywords     scanning electron microscopy, image forming, charging effects, electron transport

Received      9 June 2008, accepted 27 October 2008


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