title: Stress imagining of semiconductor surface by tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.
abstract: Tip-enhanced Raman imaging of strained silicon reveals the property of nanoscale stress imposed on the lattice. Our approach relies on the highly localized excitation provided by a metallized tip. Surface sensitive detections in nanoscale are realized by a reflection-mode configuration combined with 442-nm excitation and a silver-coated silicon nitride tip. The background signals from an underlying silicon germanium layer and a tip are well suppressed. The quantitative stress analysis is made on the basis of the Raman shift of the Si-Si phonon mode. We succeeded in visualizing the localized stress with a spatial resolution down to 25 nm whereas a conventional micro Raman technique provides only a uniform image because of the averaging effect within a diffraction-limited focused spot.
authors.affiliation: RIKEN (The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research), 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Saito
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Motohashi
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Hayazawa
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kawata