Visualization of microscopic stress fields in silica glass in the scanning electron microscope

Abstract

Quantitative measurements were made in silica glass of highly graded stress fields, as they developed: (i) in the K-dominated zone ahead of the tip of a median-type indentation micro-crack; and, (ii) at a silicon-silica interface of a metal-oxide semiconductor (MOS) device. Stress fields could be visualized on a microscopic scale using a field-emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM) equipped with a spectrally resolved cathodoluminescence (CL) device, according to piezospectroscopic (PS) assessments. The peculiarity of this newly proposed PS assessment resides in the fact that the performed CL/PS analysis exploited a peculiar luminescence emitted by optically active oxygen point defects in silica glass. ©2008 The Ceramic Society of Japan. All rights reserved.