Near-edge X-ray absorption fine-structure studies of GaN under low-energy nitrogen ion bombardment

The electronic structure of p-type GaN layers exposed to low-energy nitrogen ion bombardment was studied by near-edge X-ray absorption fine-structure (NEXAFS) spectroscopy. It was found that ion bombardment lead to the creation of states lying below the nitrogen absorption edge which posses p-symmetry. These states are attributed to nitrogen interstitials with different local topologies created during ion bombardment. Furthermore, the NEXAFS spectra also shows the development of a strong -resonance above the absorption edge with increasing incident nitrogen ion energy. This peak is attributed to the formation of molecular nitrogen at interstitial positions, arising from a build up of nitrogen ions on these sites.     

Surface partition of ion energy during the growth of TiNx thin films

A simple evaluation of ion-deposited energy during surface displacement of adatoms has been presented for physical vapor deposition technology using an appropriate interaction model. The rf reactive magnetron sputtering deposition of titanium nitride (TiN_x) thin films was taken as evidence supporting the theoretical calculation. The evolution of crystallite morphology dependent on bias (or input power) illustrates that surface and subsurface microstructure of growing films can be optimized by increasing the mobility of adatoms through ion-assistance.     

Energy deposition,reflection and sputtering in hyperthermal rare-gas→Cu bombardment

Using molecular-dynamics simulation, we study the scattering and penetration of normally incident hyperthermal (5–400 eV) Ne, Ar, and Xe atoms off a Cu crystal. We find that between 80% and 98% of the incident energy is deposited in the solid; the fraction depends primarily on the projectile mass, and — for not too low energies — only slightly on the bombarding energy. At low energy, the major part of the non-deposited energy is carried away by the reflected projectile. At energies above the sputter threshold, an increasingly important contribution of between 2% and 6% of the incident energy is carried away by sputtered particles. These results compare well with experiment. Electronic inelastic losses show only little influence on this behaviour. We demonstrate that the inclusion of a realistic attractive interaction between the projectile and the target atoms influences the energy deposition considerably at energies below around 100 eV.     

The peculiarities of the low-energy ion scattering by polycrystal targets

In the present work, experimental and computer simulation studies of low-energy (E₀ = 80-500 eV) Cs⁺ ions scattering on Ta, W, Re target surfaces and K⁺ ions scattering on Ti, V, Cr target surfaces have been performed for more accurate definition of mechanism of scattering, with a purpose of evaluation of an opportunity of use of slow ions scattering as a tool of surface layers analysis. The choice of the targets was based on the fact that the ratios of atomic masses of target atoms and ions μ = m₂/m₁ were almost the same for all cases considered and greater than 1 (direct mass ratio) however, the difference of binding energies of target atoms in the cases of Cs⁺ and K⁺ scattering was almost twice as much. It has been noticed that the dependencies of the relative energy retained by scattering ions at the maximum of energy distribution versus the initial energy E_m/E₀ (E₀) have a similar shape in all cases. The relative energy retained by scattering ions increases while the initial energy of incidence ions decreases. The curves are placed above each other relative to the binding energies of target atoms, to show what this says about the influence of binding energy on a process of scattering of low-energy ions. The correlation between value of energy change maintained by an ion for different values of E₀ in the case of scattering by targets with different masses of atoms and its binding energies is experimentally established. The contrary behavior of the E_m/E₀ (E₀) dependencies concerning the target atom binding energy quantity E_b for cases with direct (μ > 1) and inverse (μ < 1) mass ratio of colliding particles is established. The comparison of experimental energy distributions with calculated histograms shows that the binary collision approximation cannot elucidate the abnormally great shift in the maxima of relative energy distributions towards greater energy retained by scattering ions.     

Ripple topography on thin ZnO films by grazing and oblique incidence ion sputtering

We have investigated the formation and growth of nano sized ripple topography on ZnO thin films by 10 keV O¹⁺ bombardment at impact angles of 80° and 60°, varying the ion fluence from 5 × 10¹⁶ to 1 × 10¹⁸ ions/cm². At 80° the ripples are oriented along the ion beam direction whereas at 60° it is perpendicular to the ion beam direction. The developed ion induced structures are characterized by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and the alignment, variation of rms roughness, wavelength and correlation length of the structures are discussed with the existing model and basic concept of ion surface interaction.     

The determination of shadowing critical angles in impact collision ion scattering spectroscopy

Critical angles for shadowing in low-energy ion scattering spectroscopy are calculated in the momentum approximation for the Thomas-Fermi-Molière potential and the Ziegler-Biersack-Littmark potential. In the relevant parameter range the results can be fitted by a formula containing five constants depending on the potential only. For a fixed projectile-target combination at a given energy the distance dependence of the critical angle is described by a simple power law. The comparison of the calculated results with experimental data shows that the inclusion of the effect of thermal vibrations on the critical angles improves the agreement between calculations and experiment significantly.     

Growth of molybdenum carbide particles from an amorphous phase induced by ion bombardment

Transmission electron microscopy and Auger electron spectroscopy revealed that the Ar⁺-ion bombardment of a carbon-containing molybdenum film with an amorphous structure led to the growth of carbide particles smaller than 30nm in diameter. The particles possessed an fcc structure and were distributed like islands in the film. Electron diffraction analysis identified them with-MoC_0.75, a high-temperature phase of MoC_0.75. Presumably, the heating effect of the ion beam was responsible for forming and stabilizing the particles.     

Cluster size dependence of SiO2 thin film formation by O2 gas cluster ion beams

Cluster size effects of SiO₂ thin film formation with size-selected O₂ gas cluster ion beams (GCIBs) irradiation on Si surface were studied. The cluster size varied between 500 and 20,000 molecules/cluster. With acceleration voltage of 5 kV, the SiO₂ thickness was close to the native oxide thickness by irradiation of (O₂)_20,000 (0.25 eV/molecule), or (O₂)_10,000 (0.5 eV/molecule). However, it increased suddenly above 1 eV/molecule (5000 molecules/cluster), and increased monotonically up to 10 eV/molecule (500 molecules/cluster). The SiO₂ thickness with 1 and 10 eV/molecule O₂-GCIB were 2.1 and 5.0 nm, respectively. When the acceleration voltage was 30 kV, the SiO₂ thickness has a peak around 10 eV/molecule (3000 molecules/cluster), and it decreased gradually with increasing the energy/molecule. At high energy/molecule, physical sputtering effect became more dominant process than oxide formation. These results suggest that SiO₂ thin film formation can be controlled by energy per molecule.     

ESCA studies on changes in surface composition under ion bombardment

The influence of ion bombardment on the composition of surfaces was investigated by means of ESCA. The bombardment of metal oxides with inert gas ions results, not only in sputtering of the surface, but also in reduction of the oxides. The rate of reduction is particularly high when the oxide/metal interface is within the range of the bombarding ions. Ion induced reduction was found in oxide layers, thinner than the escape depth of the photoelectrons, on Mo, W, Nb, Ta, Ti, Zr, Si, and Bi. The relationship between reduction phenomena, on the one hand, and the ion energy, angle of incidence, mass of the gas used for bombardment, and ion current density, on the other hand, was investigated in the case of the Mo/Mo-oxide system. Ion bombardment of surfaces may also result in the formation of new compounds. Two examples of this are the formation of carbides through the bombardment of contaminated surfaces and the ion induced formation of C-F compounds from a mixture of K₂SiF₆ and carbon.     

Lattice disorder in silicon induced by 2.0 MeV Cu+ irradiation

The effect of 2.0 MeV Cu⁺ irradiation on Si(100) crystal has been studied by the Rutherford backscattering/channeling technique. Analysis of the lattice disorder distribution has been performed under 100 direction of tilting off from the target normal: 7°, 30°, and 45° as well as different doses. The lattice disorder distributions in Si(100) have been compared with TRIM'89 simulation. The results show that the lattice disorder distributions in Si(100) under different irradiation angles seem to be in good agreement with TRIM'89 simulation. When the dose increases up to 8.7×10¹⁴ ions/cm², the defect concentration increases leading to the formation of an amorphous layer.     

Vibrational property of the slow N 2 + ions deposited SiNx films

We have investigated vibrational properties of silicon-nitride films, SiN_x (0.3×1.33), produced by a non-thermal method using high-resolution electron energy loss spectroscopy. The results, based on a continuous random network model assuming a planar XY₃ vibrational bond unit, show that the Si-N bonds in the films closely resemble those in typical thermal silicon nitride although nitrogens occupy some metastable binding sites. We estimate force constants of the restoring forces for a Si₃N bond unit, which tend to increase gradually with increasing nitrogen content x. In particular, the central force constant k₁ for the in-plane stretching mode of silicon atoms varies with x in the range 297k331 N/M, larger than the theoretical value for a nitrogen atom imbedded in a pure Si crystal.     

Disordering and annealing of a Si surface under low-energy Si bombardment

Abstract

We simulated the bombardment of Si(100)(2 × 1) by Si atoms using molecular dynamics. The kinetic energies of the projectiles were 100 and 50 eV. To model the Si–Si-interactions the empirical potential of Stillinger and Weber with the two body part of the potential splined to the universal potential was used. A geometric criterion based on the Lindemann radius was defined to study damage in the Si target. We observed clusters of disordered Si atoms in the target induced by the bombardment. Large clusters of about 50 atoms are formed in the beginning of the bombardment; they shrink and decay into smaller clusters until and equilibrium cluster size of about 10 atoms is reached. Upon annealing at elevated temperature the disordered zones dissolve into point defects.     

Self-organization of ripples on Ti irradiated with focused ion beam

30 keV focused Ga⁺ ions were used to raster the metallographically polished surface of commercially pure Ti (CP Ti) at various FIB incidence angles over a wide range of doses (10¹⁶-10¹⁸ ions/cm²) at room temperature. The sputtered surfaces were observed in situ using FIB imaging and later carefully characterized ex situ under scanning electron microscope (SEM) and atomic force microscope (AFM). Ripples were observed on the irradiated surfaces even at the normal FIB incidence angle. The ripple evolution is analyzed as functions of surface diffusion, surface crystallographic orientation, ion dose and incidence angle. It is found that the ripple orientation was progressively influenced by the ion beam direction with incidence angle increasing and in some cases curved ripples or fragmented rods viewed from different angles occurred at high ion doses. The morphological evolution from the well-developed straight ripples to the curved ones is never observed. The formation of ripples is attributed to the competition between the formation of ripples due to anisotropic surface diffusion and the formation of incidence-angle dependent ripples determined by Bradley-Harper (BH) model.     

Synthesis of molybdenum silicide by both ion implantation and ion beam assisted deposition

Two groups of Mo/Si films were deposited on surface of Si(1 0 0) crystal. The first group of the samples was prepared by both ion beam assisted deposition (IBAD) and metal vapor vacuum arc (MEVVA) ion implantation technologies under temperatures from 200 to 400 °C. The deposited species of IBAD were Mo and Si, and different sputtering Ar ion densities were selected. The mixed Mo/Si films were implanted by Mo ion with energy of 94 keV, and fluence of Mo ion was 5 × 10¹⁶ ions/cm². The second group of the samples was prepared only by IBAD under the same test temperature range. The Mo/Si samples were analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), sheet resistance, nanohardness, and modulus of the Mo/Si films were also measured. For the Mo/Si films implanted with Mo ion, XRD results indicate that phase of the Mo/Si films prepared at 400 and 300 °C was pure MoSi₂. Sheet resistance of the Mo/Si films implanted with Mo ion was less than that of the Mo/Si films prepared without ion implantation. Nanohardness and modulus of the Mo/Si films were obviously affected by test parameters.     

Fatigue-free Pb(Zr0.52Ti0.48)O3 thin films on indium tin oxide coated substrates by a sol-gel process

Fatigue-free Pb(Zr_0.52Ti_0.48)O₃ (PZT) ferroelectric thin films were successfully prepared on indium tin oxide (ITO) coated glass substrates using the sol-gel method combined with a rapid thermal annealing process (RTA). The films post-annealed at a temperature of 700 °C for 2 min by RTA process formed (110)-oriented Pb(Zr_0.52Ti_0.48)O₃ thin films with pure perovskite structure, and had a good morphology as well. The good ferroelectricity of the prepared PZT films was confirmed by P–E hysteresis loop measurements. Fatigue characteristics showed stable behavior. Degradation in polarization was not found while the repeating cycles were up to 10¹¹, and a low leakage current density of 10⁻⁸ A/cm² was also obtained from the highly fatigue-resisted PZT thin films on ITO/glass substrates. Received: 19 October 1998 / Accepted: 29 March 1999 / Published online: 26 May 1999     

Enhancement of the secondary ion emission induced by fast clusters

The emission yields of the secondary ions are measured by using a conventional time of flight (TOF) technique under bombardments of Mg and C₂, Ni and Si₂ with different energies, and C_n, Si_n and Ni_n (n = 1-3) with the different charge states and with energy of 1.5 MeV per atom, respectively. For the bombardments of C_n, Si_n and Ni_n, the enhancements of the secondary ion emissions increase with increasing cluster sizes and charge states. For the bombardments of Mg and C₂, Ni and Si₂, although the mass and the nuclear charges of C₂ and Si₂ are the same as or equivalent to Mg or Ni, respectively, the enhancements of the secondary ion emissions induced by the clusters of C₂ and Si₂ in a wide energy range are also clearly indicated. The instantaneous collective interaction of the cluster constituents plays an important role in the secondary ion emissions.     

Study on low-energy bombardment of Au (1 1 1) by noble metal atoms with molecular dynamics simulations

The low-energy bombardment of Au (1 1 1) surface by noble metal atoms is studied with molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. With the incident-energy dependence of adatom yields, sputtering yields, and vacancy yields for different projectiles, we find that the implantation of projectiles in shallow layers below surface can be distinguished by subplantation (in the first and second layers) and implantation (deeper than the third layer). The transition from subplantation to implantation occurs at the incident energy of about 45 eV for the low-energy bombardment of noble metal atoms on Au (1 1 1). The incident-energy dependence of defect yields is obviously different for the subplantation and implantation of projectiles. Based on our MD simulations, we discuss the influence of low-energy bombardment on film growth and the guide to the search for optimum deposition parameters.     

Formation of nanodots on oblique ion sputtered InP surfaces

Using a field emission gun based scanning electron microscopy, we report the formation of nanodots on the InP surfaces after bombardment by 100 keV Ar⁺ ions under off-normal ion incidence (30° and 60° with respect to the surface normal) condition in the fluence range of 1 × 10¹⁶ to 1 × 10¹⁸ ions cm⁻². Nanodots start forming after a threshold fluence of about 1 × 10¹⁷ ions cm⁻². It is also seen that although the average dot diameter increases with fluence the average number of dots decreases with increasing fluence. Formation of such nanostructured features is attributed due to ion-beam sputtering. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis of the ion sputtered surface clearly shows In enrichment of the sputtered InP surface. The observation of growth of nanodots on the Ar⁺-ion sputtered InP surface under the present experimental condition matches well with the recent simulation results based on an atomistic model of sputter erosion.     

Modification and smoothing of patterned surface by gas cluster ion beam irradiation

Surface modification and smoothing of patterned surfaces with gas cluster ion beams were studied. In this work, line and space patterns having various intervals and depths were created on amorphous carbon films by focused Ga⁺ ion beams, and subsequently, Ar GCIB irradiations on the pattern were performed. When the acceleration voltage of Ar cluster ions was 20 kV, the grooves, whose interval was below 200 nm, were planarized. However, it required much higher ion dose for wider interval of patterns. It is estimated that the distance of lateral motions induced by one cluster ion impact defines the spatial wavelength dependence of smoothing.     

Range evaluation in SIMS depth profiles of Er-implantations in silicon

In the last decade ion implantation of common dopants in silicon has been almost full characterised. However, data of inner transition elements are based on few measurements or even extrapolations. Our investigations focus on erbium, an upcoming dopant in photonic applications. Some of us have previously found errors of 20% in the projected range of Er in Si and SiO₂ when comparing the range profiles measured with SIMS and simulations using SRIM, T2D, and our own binary collision simulator IMSIL. Because of the far-reaching consequences, we have performed additional, more precise experiments to confirm our previous results.Equal doses of Er has been implanted into SIMOX wafers with energies of 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, and 600 keV. Profiles have been measured with secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). Relative sensitivity factors (RSF) were gathered from low-energy implantations, remaining within the Si top layer. We used the Si/SiO₂ interface at exactly 217.7 nm to calibrate the depth scale of all profiles. In addition dynamical Monte-Carlo simulations of the sputter process were taken to correct the depth scale and the interface position.