TY - JOUR
AU - Travis Frazer
AU - Joshua Knobloch
AU - Jorge Charpak
AU - Kathleen Hoogeboom-Pot
AU - Damiano Nardi
AU - Sadegh Yazdi
AU - Weilun Chao
AU - Erik Anderson
AU - Marie Tripp
AU - Sean King
AU - Henry Kapteyn
AU - Margaret Murnane
AU - Begoña Abad
AB - Ultrathin films and multilayers, with controlled thickness down to single atomic layers, are critical for advanced technologies ranging from nanoelectronics to spintronics to quantum devices. However, for thicknesses less than 10 nm, surfaces and dopants contribute significantly to the film properties, which can differ dramatically from that of bulk materials. For amorphous films being developed as low dielectric constant interfaces for nanoelectronics, the presence of surfaces or dopants can soften films and degrade their mechanical performance. Here we use coherent short-wavelength light to fully and nondestructively characterize the mechanical properties of individual films as thin as 5 nm within a bilayer. In general, we find that the mechanical properties depend both on the amount of doping and the presence of surfaces. In very thin (5-nm) silicon carbide bilayers with low hydrogen doping, surface effects induce a substantial softening—by almost an order of magnitude—compared with the same doping in thicker (46-nm) bilayers. These findings are important for informed design of ultrathin films for a host of nano- and quantum technologies, and for improving the switching speed and efficiency of next-generation electronics.
BT - Phys. Rev. Materials
DA - 2020-07
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.4.073603
N2 - Ultrathin films and multilayers, with controlled thickness down to single atomic layers, are critical for advanced technologies ranging from nanoelectronics to spintronics to quantum devices. However, for thicknesses less than 10 nm, surfaces and dopants contribute significantly to the film properties, which can differ dramatically from that of bulk materials. For amorphous films being developed as low dielectric constant interfaces for nanoelectronics, the presence of surfaces or dopants can soften films and degrade their mechanical performance. Here we use coherent short-wavelength light to fully and nondestructively characterize the mechanical properties of individual films as thin as 5 nm within a bilayer. In general, we find that the mechanical properties depend both on the amount of doping and the presence of surfaces. In very thin (5-nm) silicon carbide bilayers with low hydrogen doping, surface effects induce a substantial softening—by almost an order of magnitude—compared with the same doping in thicker (46-nm) bilayers. These findings are important for informed design of ultrathin films for a host of nano- and quantum technologies, and for improving the switching speed and efficiency of next-generation electronics.
PB - American Physical Society
PY - 2020
SE - 073603
EP - 073603
T2 - Phys. Rev. Materials
TI - Full characterization of ultrathin 5-nm low-k dielectric bilayers: Influence of dopants and surfaces on the mechanical properties
UR - https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.4.073603
VL - 4
ER -