And the ACR Woman Award 2017 goes to … Evelin Fisslthaler
Evelin Fisslthaler has been a team member since 2009. Born in Salzburg, she earned her PhD in physics at the Graz University of Technology. After graduating she worked for the NanoTechCenter Weiz before joining the Graz Centre for Electron Microscopy. Evelin’s research efforts are concentrated on nanoanalysis of microelectronics using transmission electron microscopy. In October 2017 she won the ACR Woman Award for leading the FFG-funded project “Quantitative Analyse innerer Grenzflächen/Quantitative analysis of internal interfaces”.
This cooperative research project unites scientific challenges from five companies – ams, AT&S, EPCOS, Lam Research and Infineon – in order to forward both, knowledge about the microstructure of electronic devices and methods for quantitative nanoanalysis using the highly advanced TEM infrastructure available at the ZFE. The scope of this project is the high-resolution analysis of internal interfaces in multilayer materials for electronic devices via aberration corrected STEM combined with HR EELS and EDS. For this purpose, a variety of different approaches for both, data acquisition and data analysis, is consequently refined to provide reliable and reproducible datasets with high accuracy in spatial and energetic resolution as well as in terms of quantitative reliability. At the same time, TEM sample preparation methods are sufficiently enhanced and modified to provide specimens with adequate quality. One of the project’s aims is the detection and analysis of interfacial layers, ranging from a few atomic layers to the sub-monolayer dimension. The properties and expanse of these transition regions are of major interest, since both can be crucial to device performance. Therefore, the EELS and EDS signals of the materials of interest are traced with high spatial and energetic resolution to yield detailed information about the chemical composition and the structure of those few atomic layers that form the interface between two different layers. For the subsequent processing of the acquired data, various signal optimization and fit procedures are refined, finally leading to a more detailed comprehension of the nature of transition regions.
Atomically resolved HRSTEM image of an interface between silicon (bottom layer) and germanium (top layer), showing the effect of the slight discrepancy between the two materials lattice parameters – the germanium lattice in the upper part of the image shows crystal defects that were formed during deposition to compensate for the mismatch.
Our warmest congratulations!
Vienna – ACR Enquete 2017. Photo: ACR/APA-Fotoservice/Schedl
Want to know more?
ACR article (German) http://www.acr.ac.at/presse-detail/acr-enquete-2017-gemeinsame-forschung-bringt-innovationen-in-die-kmu/
ACR article (German) http://www.acr.ac.at/presse-detail/acr-woman-award-2017-mit-herausforderungen-mitwachsen/