Strain relaxation in periodic arrays of Si/SiGe quantum wires determined by coplanar high resolution x-ray diffraction and grazing incidence diffraction

Elastic relaxation in dry-etched periodic wires fabricated from molecular beam epitaxy grown Si/SiGe multilayers was studied by coplanar and grazing incidence (GID) high-resolution x-ray diffraction. The inhomogeneous strain distribution in the wires was calculated by the finite element method, which provided the input data for simulations of the scattered intensities using kinematical diffraction theory used for comparison with measured reciprocal space maps. A fabrication-induced layer covering the wire surfaces, modifies the strain distribution. Using GID, the geometrical shape of the wires and their in-plane strain can be determined independently of each other.