Probing confined interfacial excitations in buried layers by Brillouin light scattering
Brillouin light scattering from silicon oxynitride films grown on GaAs reveals a low frequency elastic wave excitation at frequencies lying below that of the Rayleigh surface wave. This mode, identified as an excitation localized by the interface, arises from the presence of a soft, thin transition layer between the film and substrate. Observations of this low frequency excitation offer a previously unexplored approach to characterize, non-destructively, the properties of buried interfaces.
cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗