AVS 53rd International Symposium
    Thin Film Friday Sessions
       Session TF+EM-FrM

Paper TF+EM-FrM5
Novel Annealing Treatments Applied to Binary Alloy Thin Films

Friday, November 17, 2006, 9:20 am, Room 2022

Session: In-Situ/Ex-Situ & Real-Time Monitoring and Characterization
Presenter: J.R. Skuza, The University of Toledo
Authors: J.R. Skuza, The University of Toledo
R.A. Lukaszew, The University of Toledo
E.M. Dufresne, Argonne National Lab
C. Cionca, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
R. Clarke, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
A. Cebollada, Instituto de Microelectronica de Madrid, Spain
Correspondent: Click to Email
Rapid thermal annealing (RTA) is widely used for electronic materials processing, from the activation of dopants to the healing of lattice defects caused by ion implantation. Here, we describe an innovative application of x-ray undulator radiation to simultaneously anneal and probe the structural evolution that occurs during annealing in real-time. X-ray Rapid Thermal Annealing (XRTA) is similar to laser annealing, but there is a unique advantage in that the x-ray energy can be tuned to the absorption edge of a particular element, thereby permitting efficient annealing of buried layers and nanostructures. In our studies at the MHATT/XOR (Sector 7) beam line at the Advanced Photon Source, we have used XRTA to enhance the degree of chemical order in epitaxial and equiatomic FePt thin films. We have chosen this particular binary alloy system because it exhibits an interesting fcc-fct phase transformation. This phase transformation allows for the real-time tracking of the degree of chemical ordering achieved due to the appearance of a forbidden reflection in fcc structures [(001) peak] and the doubling of the fundamental reflection [(002) peak]. These results will be compared to the ones obtained with traditional resistive annealing. We will demonstrate that undulator radiation offers unique possibilities for materials processing AND real-time structural probing. @FootnoteText@ This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation (DMR Grant #0355171), the American Chemical Society (PRF Grant #41319-AC), and the Research Corporation Cottrell Scholar Award. Use of the Advanced Photon Source was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Basic Energy Sciences, Office of Science, under Contract No. W-31-109-Eng-38.