Use of scanning electron acoustic microscopy for the analysis of III–V compound devices

Abstract Scanning electron acoustic microscopy (SEAM) gives information about the local thermal properties of semiconductors with a spatial resolution down to 1 μm in GaAs at 1 MHz frequency. We show here that SEAM is a unique tool to visualize zones of non-adherence between a metallic layer and the semiconductor which are imaged before the formation of bubbles. The SEAM signal is shown to correlate quantitatively with the reduction in the thermal conductivity in the case of implanted layers (InP implanted with silicon at 400 keV and 2 × 10 14 cm −2 ) before and after thermal annealing.