Sophisticated analysis of the PDA of thin praseodymia films at temperatures up to 300 C

High quality praseodymia films are discussed as insulating buffer material, e.g. to form high-functional Germanium On Insulator (GeOI) heterostructures on the dominating Si wafer platform. For this purpose, thermal treatment of the oxide buffer layers is necessary to grow high quality Ge films with low defect densities. To control and to improve the quality of the GeOI structures, it is crucial to understand the behavior of praseodymia films regarding structure and defect formation during these annealing processes. Therefore, thin heteroepitaxial praseodymia films with fluorite structure on Si(111) were annealed under UHV conditions at temperatures up to 300 C. Afterwards, investigations by X-ray diffraction (XRD), grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD) and X-ray reflectometry (XRR) were performed to obtain information about structural changes of the film during the annealing process. Analyzing the XRD measurements within the kinematic diffraction theory leads to a detailed view on structural changes of the oxide films, e.g. separation into different crystalline phases.