Ion scattering studies of silicon based epitaxy.

Successful epitaxial growth depends on careful control of the original interface and characterization of the grown overlayer. Ion scattering is a depth sensitive crystallography which can be used to investigate both these aspects of epitaxy. This paper briefly describes the fundamentals of the ion scattering /channeling process and illustrates the application of this technique to two aspects of Si-based epitaxy: 1) The effects of surface reconstruction on the initial phases of Si homoepitaxy and 2) the measurement of strain in Ge(x)Si(1-x) epitaxial layers grown on Si.