If we are getting very low intensity in HRXRD of a thin films like 10 or 12 than is it justified with the data?
I think you should specify your question: which material, which film thickness, which substrate, which equipment etc. We are no magician able to give you an answer on a (hard understandable) question without any background information.
Dear Naveen,
Probably you have forgotten to type the unit of thickness of your filmI micron or nm? I think peak positions are more important than intensityfor identifying the structure.
Hello Sir
Sorry I am modifying the question
Thickness ot films are 500 nm, grown on Si substrate and material is Sb grown via thermal evaporation technique.
This will depend upon the intensities of background and your thin film data. Intensity of peaks should be high, so we can easily differentiate that they are related to background or thin film. With only 10-12 counts it is difficult to say that these are related to thin film samples. Try to perform same experiment without thin film samples to check background counts. To improve the intensity many methods are there but scanning of films for more time will helps to get good data
It would be good to get an impression about your measurement. Could you post an image of the diffractogram?
You can try glass substrate to check the effect of Si substrate if any change in intensity is observed for the same thickness.
You are operating virtually "blind" with a 0D detector and "groping in the dark"! :-)
Here is how you ought to really do this. At MIT we tweaked up the intensity significantly by optimizing the beam conditioners while watching the incident beam live. A 500 nm film epi or poly should light up like a "Christmas Tree" with signal. You may also have a challenge with "optimization" prior to rocking curve measurements.
Here is what you can do with a real time 2D Bragg XRD Microscope attachment to any one of your many existing diffractometers at your University. There is one available for an on-site live demo in Bengaluru India:
NIST2000SRM - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hkQVpAmcCY&list=PL7032E2DAF1F3941F&index=38
"This Standard Reference Material (SRM) provides the high-resolution X-ray diffraction (HRXRD) community with International System of Units (SI) [1] traceable Si (220) d-spacing in transmission, surface-to-crystal-plane wafer miscut, and surface-to-Si (004) Bragg angle in reflection for our reference wavelength. A unit of SRM 2000 consists of 25 mm × 25 mm × 0.725 mm double-polished (100)-oriented, single-crystal Si specimens with a nominal 50 nm Si0.85Ge0.15 epitaxial layer and 25 nm Si cap."
Contact Raja Seshadri - [email protected] 998 010 3925
[email protected] or [email protected]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hkQVpAmcCY&list=PL7032E2DAF1F3941F&index=38
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_best_way_to_interpret_3D_reciprocal_space_data_from_XRD_rocking_curve_analysis2?_tpcectx=profile_questions
Naveen! Good fundamental question! Hence, I'm interested in all contributors' comments :-)
1. I hope you realize that you may modify any comment including the original question anytime you choose on RG. Great feature to correct typos and embellish thoughts. You may also attach relevant documents & illustrations as I have done. Use the features copiously :-)
2. Post your data when convenient for the best advise from the highly erudite & expert RG members. Remember all XRD intensity is relative. So, 10 or 12 intensity value relative to the substrate at 100, 1000, 10,000? What was the "background" value?
3. Compute the extinction depth for the sample for the chosen (hkl) rocking curve. Then you will know the relative intensity to expect from the film compared to the substrate. BTW the substrate is an excellent "reference" for such cases.
4. Share specifics of the HDXRD setup including SDD (sample-to-detector-distance), slit dimension, beam conditioners and power levels used.
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