Improvement in detection limit for time-of-flight SIMS analysis of dopants in GaN structures

Secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) has been used extensively to monitor dopant levels in semiconductor materials. The preponderance of these measurements has been made with magnetic sector or quadrupole analyzers. Use of time-of-flight (ToF) analyzers has been limited because of an inability to match the detection limit of the other analyzers. Optimization of the ToF-SIMS analysis beam pulse width and analysis frames per cycle is shown to provide as much as an order of magnitude improvement in detection limit. The magnesium dopant in GaN structures was used for the study and analysis was made with Cs+ sputtering source and Bi3+. The count rate for CsMg+ increased by a factor of 11.3 with both improvements applied. This was evidenced by a detection limit improvement for magnesium from 7.5 × 1017 atoms/cm3 to low 1017 atoms/cm3. Increasing the number of analysis frames from one to ten causes cycle time to increase by a factor of five. Hence, there is a tradeoff between improved detection limit and analysis time.