Semiconductors are the basis of many of today's technical products and therefore an important foundation of our modern economy. One material that is currently the subject of intensive research is doped gallium nitride (GaN), which has outstanding properties, particularly in the form of nanowire structures. For the chemical and structural characterization of such semiconductor nanowires, analyses using EDS and WDS were carried out on a FESEM in this work. The results show that strictly controlled analytical conditions, in particular low primary energy (here 4 keV), are crucial for analysis with high spatial resolution. Only by supplementing the EDS with WDS was it possible to determine both the structure of the nanowires and the trace element content of the dopant Mg (800 ppm). This example proves that advanced analytical questions, in which both high spatial and high spectral resolution are important, can only be solved by using WDS in addition to EDS on SEM.
Abratis et al. (Thu,) studied this question.