In-operando studies of piezoelectric HfZro$_2$ film on InAs nanowires

The use of imaging tools is critical to our Comprehension of the Universe. Imagingsystems offer vital scientific data on anything from galaxies and stars, examined bymassive Telescopes, to micro- and nanostructures, examined by Microscopes. Anideal probe for non-destructive imaging is an X-ray when the object being studiedis roughly 100 nanometers in size. Compared to optical image-forming lenses, theprocess of producing X-ray image-forming lenses is far more complex. As a result,”lensless” methods that depend on radiation’s coherent qualities were created. Thethird generation of synchrotron sources made powerful and highly coherent X-raybeams widely available. New imaging techniques like coherent X-ray diffractiveimaging (CXDI) employ them.A vast range of potential applications in several fields of physics, chemistry, biology,and engineering are made conceivable by modern nanotechnology. Compared tobulk material at the macroscale, matter exhibits distinct physical and chemicalcharacteristics at the nanoscale. The semiconductor industry’s ongoing trend offunctional component reduction presents new growth and characterization techniqueproblems. This thesis is divided into two broad analyses. One part of the thesisfocused on revealing the piezoelectric effect of Hafnium Zirconium Oxide (HZO) onsingle semiconductor nanowires (NWs). Their effective strain relaxation qualitieshave drawn a lot of attention to them over the past few decades.Furthermore, since strain has a substantial impact on NW response, one can visualizethe induced strain effect from the applied voltages via the changes in the correspondingdiffraction patterns. Moreover, 3-dimensional Computer-aided engineering (CAE)modeling and simulation-based studies via COMSOL Multiphysics of the multi-layersample structure are performed as a part of the thesis in order to understand theideal response of the piezoelectric material under different voltage cycles for variousphysical configurations.The second part targets the implementation of the Angular X-ray Cross CorrelationAnalysis (AXCCA) for the determination and understanding of the mesocrystalstructures via the correlation between the intensities of the experimentally retrieveddiffraction peaks at their corresponding transfer vectors. This allowed us to analyzethe angular anisotropy of the structures under investigation along with theunderstanding of structural orientation order. The mathematical validation of thecorrelation peaks revealed the structural details, which were finally compared withthe actual crystal structures, confirming the application and accuracy of this AXCCAmethod.The work is conducted on these two projects as a part of my research at theDESY research center. The PETRA III synchrotron’s P23 and P10 beamlines aswell as MAXIV’s NanoMax beamline in Lund, Sweden, were used for conductingexperimental studies.