Thermal interaction of indium phosphide (InP) bulk compound semiconductor with thin gold metal films was investigated in the course of the present work. The interaction of the InP/Au system resulted in a pattern showing fractal dimensions. The temperature dependence of the fractal parameters was investigated in a broad temperature range from 200 to 600 °C. No significant temperature dependence of the fractal dimension was observed. The same calculations will be presented for Au/InP and AuPd/InP systems. Our calculations show that the Pd-based contacts have a different behaviour than AuGe metallization where a strong temperature dependence of the fractal number was observed earlier. Another topology measure, the structural entropy is also calculated for the samples. The structural entropy is usually applied for determining the type of the localization of charge distributions, but it can also be used for generalized charges, such as the lightness of the pixels of an electron microscopy picture. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The thermal interactions of thin AlGe and AlNiGe layers with a bulk GaAs monocrystal were investigated. The heat treatment of these systems was carried out in the working chamber of a scanning electron microscope. The SEM pictures were analysed using a fractal mathematical technique. It was found that the surface of the samples has fractal character. No temperature dependence of the fractal dimension was observed. The samples were also studied using the structural entropy versus filling factor maps of the samples in order to find their localization properties. The SEM pictures of AlGe perform mostly as a Gaussian functions, whereas the AlNiGe samples show usually a behaviour with exponential decay. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.