Yao Xu, Zhan-Shan Wang, Bei Wang, Hong-Chang Wang, Wen-Juan Wu, Shu-Min Zhang, Zhong Zhang, Feng-Li Wang, Shu-Ji Qin, Ling-Yan Chen

Determination of tungsten layer profiles in bilayer structures using X-ray reflectivity method

Chinese Physics Letters 24 (2007) 366–369

An effectual method is presented to determine the profiles of a tungsten (W) layer, such as the density, the thickness and the roughness in the multilayer structures, using the x-ray reflectivity technique. To avoid oxidation effects of tungsten, a B4C capping layer is deposited onto to the W layer. To observe the profiles of the tungsten layer with different thicknesses, three groups of W/B4C bilayers with different thicknesses are prepared by using ultra high vacuum dc magnetron sputtering and measured by an x-ray diffractometer. A type of genetic algorithm called the differential evolution is used to simulate the measurement data so as to obtain the parameters of bilayers. According to the simulation, it is shown that the W layer density varies from 95.26% to 97.51% compared to the bulk. In our experiment, the deposition rate is 0.044 nm/s, and the thickness is varied in the range of 9.8-19.4 nm.

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