Abstract
The strain relaxation within a strained-Si on SiGe on insulator (SGOI) structure might be one of the key issues in development of strained-Si MOSFET devices for high-performance ULSIs. In order to investigate the strain relaxation within the thin strained-Si layers, a new characterization technique to directly evaluate a local strain variation in the layers is required. Hence, we have developed the nano-beam electron diffraction (NBD) method which has a lateral resolution of 10 nm and a strain resolution of 0.1%. In this paper, we discuss a detailed investigation of whether the NBD method could be utilized to clarify a strain in a strained-Si layer on the SGOI structures.
