3.1 TEM Work at Cornell University
3.1 TEM Investigations of Grain Boundaries in Silicon
3.1.1 Background
3.1 TEM Work at Cornell University | ||
3.1 TEM Investigations of Grain Boundaries in Silicon |
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3.1.1 Background | ||
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The beginning of 1977 found me in Ithaca, N.Y State, USA. The small town features the a major "ivy league" Cornell University, and its “Materials Science and Engineering” unit was among the best in the USA. I was a post-doc there, charged with bonding together two Si wafers in such a way that a grain boundary with per-determined geometry resulted. This would allow to look at grain boundary structures in a systematic way and, hopefully, would even produce some insights into the electronic properties of grain boundaries in Si. It didn’t. | |
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Originally I called the technique “sintering” in want of a better word. Later it became known as “wafer bonding” ad acquired a lot of interest for advanced micro electronic techniques. | |
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The project was funded from what today we would call “green energy”, sub group solar cell technology. A newly founded company (Mobile Tyco) was involved too, and on the side I was supposed top look at some special silicon Mobile Tyco produced by a rather involved if not to say crazy technique (Edge-Defined, Film-Fed Growth (EFG). | |
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It was my first encounter with solar cell physics and technology, and this topic would stay with me almost all of my active research life. | |
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The Institute had a Siemens Elmiskop 102 at its disposal that was kept in prime conditions byRay Coles. It actually allowed to take high resolution pictures, and I used this “HRTEM” for the grain boundary work and for other projects including later work when I was with IBM. I fondly believe that I took a few "first" HRTEM pictures and I will comment on this in the picture part. | |
3.1.2 Publications | ||
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Not counting conference proceedings and other small stuff, the total count considering
sintered grain boundaries in Si is, once more: one (1) Well, may be one could say 1,5 since my colleague and friend Barry Carter used my specimen for some complex investigations of diffraction patterns resulting form periodic networks of discolorations in grain boundaries; it's publication No 20 on this list and it collected 44 citations. Here is my "list": |
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| 19 | FÖLL,
H., AST, D.G.: TEM observations on grain boundaries in sintered Si. Phil. Mag. 40 (1979) 589 (103 citations) The co-author, Prof, Dieter Ast, had written the proposal and thus came up with the money for the project. However, he was away on a sabbatical while I worked on the project and his scientific contribution was minor. | |
3.1.3 Pictures | ||||
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The venerable "Philosophical Magazine" pubnished my work and allowed a lot of space for the pictures. Here are the "originals" plus some auxiliaries: | |||
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© H. Föll (Archive H. Föll)