Fabry-Pérot Resonance Shifts as a Novel Non-destructive In Situ Surface Damage Diagnostic
Current surface damage evaluation for nanostructured electronic devices requires specialized equipment or conditions outside the designed operating environment and cannot be used for in situ evaluation of surface damage. In this work, we developed a non-destructive method to probe the surface sublimation of a semiconductor heterostructure which can be applied to other semiconductor damage mechanisms. This approach employs shifts in the resonances of an optical cavity comprising the surface and an integrated distributed Bragg reflector fabricated below the semiconductor heterostructure undergoing sublimation. We performed the demonstration of this technique under vacuum, but surface damage effects can be observed in any operational environment either in situ or ex situ.