Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2011
It has been well established that sputtering artifacts such as ion beam mixing, preferential sputtering and cone formation ultimately limit interface resolution in Auger and ESCA depth profiling. We have conducted a comparision of the effect of sample rotation, and of the angle of incidence of the ion beam using one and two ion guns on interface resolution. Our investigation has concentrated on the interface resolution and detection of impurities at the various interfaces of a typical semiconductor metallization scheme [Al 700 nm/ TiW 100 nm/ Si02 100 nm/Si]. We have determined that in going from a standard sputtering geometry of a 67 degree tilt from the surface normal to 80 degrees one obtains a factor of five improvement in interface resolution. Sample rotation, on the other hand, was found to improve interface resolution by a factor of two at 67 degrees and to result in minor improvement at 80 degrees. The effect of two ion guns was found to have a negligible effect on the samples studied.