FEI has released its Truecrystal strain analysis package that can be installed on a Titan or Tecnai scanning/transmission electron microscope (S/TEM) system.
This automated strain analysis package allows engineers to achieve accurate measurements in a fraction of the time of existing techniques.
Joseph Race, product marketing manager, Electronics Division, FEI, said: 'Truecrystal is a complete analytical package for the determination of strain along any line in a crystalline sample, at the nanometer level.' Truecrystal uses a combination of nano-beam diffraction in the TEM, and an off-line data analysis package to generate the data required for strained silicon process development.
The NBD technique is not subject to the limitations observed in more traditional methods, such as high-resolution TEM (HRTEM) and convergent beam electron diffraction.
The on-line software component works within the microscope user interface, and the line-scan workflow will be familiar to anyone who has undertaken chemical analysis on a TEM.
The off-line software component allows for strain analysis of each individual diffraction peak of the acquired diffraction patterns.
The resulting data is then used to automatically generate a plot of the strain profile across the acquired line scan.
