Study of the structural quality of heteroepitaxial silicon-on-sapphire structures by high-resolution X-ray diffraction, X-ray reflectivity, and electron microscopy

Heteroepitaxial silicon-on-sapphire (SOS) structures have been studied by high-resolution X-ray diffraction, X-ray reflectivity, electron microscopy, and electron diffraction. These methods yielded a large amount of complementary data on the defect structure of both the sapphire substrate and the silicon film, including integral and local (at the atomic-resolution level) information about the substrate, film, and sapphire-silicon interface.