1.Film Introduction

Thin film materials are materials with relatively small thickness, usually in the nanometer to micrometer scale. These materials have specific properties and applications, and are often used to manufacture various devices and technologies in the fields of electronics, optics, energy, biomedicine, etc. There are many types of thin film materials and their uses are wide. Common ones include metal thin films, semiconductor thin films, ceramic thin films, optical thin films and so on.

2.Application of Grazing Incidence XRD (GIXRD) Technology in Characterization

X-ray testing technology is widely used to characterize various thin film materials. Thin film materials are relatively thin and usually need to be attached to a certain substrate material. In conventional XRD testing, the penetration depth of X-rays is generally from a few microns to tens of microns, which is much greater than the thickness of the film, resulting in the signal of the film being affected by the substrate, and the strong signal from the substrate will cover up the signal of the film. In addition, as the diffraction angle increases, the irradiation area of the X-ray on the sample gradually decreases, and the X-ray can only radiate part of the sample, and the volume of the entire sample cannot be used, and the diffraction signal is weak.

Grazing incidence XRD (GIXRD) is a method specifically used to test thin film samples. "Grazing incidence" means that the incident angle θ of the X-ray is very small (<5°), and the incident X-ray is almost parallel to the surface of the sample. When the incident angle of the X-ray becomes smaller, its incident depth becomes shallower, which is conducive to reducing the influence of the substrate signal on the result and enhancing the intensity of the thin film signal; at the same time, as the incident angle decreases, the irradiation area also increases, increasing the volume of the sample participating in diffraction.

3.Analysis Cases

In this experiment, a 100nm gold film plated on single crystal silicon (denoted as Au/Si) was used as the test sample, and a FRINGE benchtop X-ray diffractometer was used to perform conventional analysis and GIXRD analysis on the sample for comparison.

(1)Picture of sample to be tested

(2)Instrument test parameter settings

Scan parameters：

Instrument parameters:

(4)Test results display 

Diffraction pattern of the sample (conventional scan)

Diffraction pattern of Au/Si sample (grazing incidence scanning)

(5)Conclusion

Through the above test results, he diffraction spectrum collected from the conventional scanning mode shows a diffraction peak of the Si(004) crystal plane at around 2θ=69.13°, and its peak intensity is abnormally high. This is a strong signal from the substrate single crystal silicon, and a weak diffraction signal of the Au(111) crystal plane also appears. However, the diffraction spectrum collected from the grazing incidence mode shows that the diffraction peak of the single crystal silicon Si(004) crystal plane will not appear, and the diffraction peak of the Au thin film on the single crystal Si will be clearly displayed.