Grazing-incidence small-angle X-ray scattering study of correlated lateral density fluctuations in W/Si multilayers

A structural characterization of W/Si multilayers using X-ray reflectivity (XRR), scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and grazing-incidence small-angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS) is presented. STEM images revealed lateral, periodic density fluctuations in the Si layers, which were further analysed using GISAXS. Characteristic parameters of the fluctuations such as average distance between neighbouring fluctuations, average size and lateral distribution of their position were obtained by fitting numerical simulations to the measured scattering images, and these parameters are in good agreement with the STEM observations. For the numerical simulations the density fluctuations were approximated as a set of spheroids distributed inside the Si layers as a 3D para­crystal (a lattice of spheroids with short-range ordering but lacking any long-range order). From GISAXS, the density of the material inside the density fluctuations is calculated to be 2.07 g cm(−3) which is 89% of the bulk value of the deposited layer (2.33 g cm(−3)).