SAXS for Semiconductors
The semiconductor industry is being shaped by demand for higher computing performance, lower power consumption, AI acceleration, advanced packaging, and resilient global supply chains. As traditional transistor scaling becomes more challenging, innovation is increasingly focused on new materials, architectures, and manufacturing technologies.
Challenges
Perovskites perform, but don't hold up.
Ion migration, moisture and thermal sensitivity, phase segregation under light: long-term stability remains one of the field’s biggest unsolved problems.
Order is hard to achieve in organic semiconductors.
Charge transport depends on crystallinity and chain packing, but solution-processed films fight competing crystallization and disorder as they dry.
Quantum dots need simultaneous control.
Size uniformity, surface ligand chemistry, and inter-dot spacing all need to be nailed at once during film assembly.
Lattice mismatch strains the structure.
Heterostructures and epitaxial layers are prone to strain, dislocations, and interfacial defects wherever lattices don’t quite align.
Structure keeps evolving.
Grain size, connectivity, and interfacial structure form in minutes during coating or deposition — then keep drifting under heat, light, bias, and moisture, and shifting from batch to batch.
Solutions
Laboratory SAXS/WAXS technology provides quantitative access to the crystallinity, orientation, phase separations and interface formation during development and fabrication. In thin-film semiconductors, grazing-incidence geometries (GISAXS/GIWAXS) probe near-surface and in-plane organization in-situ or in-operando, directly linking processing conditions and operational stress to device reliability.
Information obtained
Thin film crystallinity, phase and crystallite sze of perovskites, organic semiconductors and quantum dots
The crystallite morphology, phase, uniformity and spacing of semiconductors in thin films can be measured using GISAXS and GIWAXS techniques to understand charge transport rates across the material.
Anisotropic crystallite orientation
If crystallites are aniostropic in shape, their orientation can impact the efficiency of charge transport and other optical and mechanical properties. The GISAXS and GIWAXS techniques can measure the anisotropy across the surface of films to optimize the orientation and maintain quality of the material.
Film thickness and surface roughness
The film thickness affects transmission of light and charge and the roughness affects the quality of the interface with other surfaces. X-ray reflectivity measures these material properties for control of the material performance.
Lattice strain and residual stress
By measuring the nanoscale structure of films at different manufacturing stages or under usage environments the electrical properties and mechanical strength can be controlled.
Porosity/void structure in mesoporous scaffolds
Pore size and connectivity control the diffusion of molecules, ions, gases, and liquids through mesoporous scaffolds, influencing reaction rates and device performance. This can be measured with SAXS under usage conditions providing more clarity in the material performance.
Data example
In this example, the residual stress of a material used for memory chips is measured using Grazing-Incidence WAXS. This shows how much stress remains on the wafer once the material has relaxed after fabrication, which may lead to failure from cracking or pealing. A value of 235 MPa may be considered low residual stress in this case.
Figure 1. (A) Grazing incidence wide angle x-ray pattern from Ge2Sb2Te5 collected at an angle of incidence of 5° with an exposure time of 60 s over an area of 220 x 160 mm using 12 images of Eiger 1M in virtual detector mode. (B) Example of d-spacing = sin²(Ψ) curve and resulting residual stress value equal to 235 ± 5 MPa.
Typical Product Configurations
Nano-inXider
Low budget
Xeuss Pro
Mid budget
Xeuss Pro
High budget
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