Influence of type of bonds in compounds on the mechanism of the sputtered excited particles formation under ion bombardment

A review of studies of the radiation of the excited particles ejected from metals and its chemical compounds under ion bombardment are presented. The observed features of ion-photon emission (IPE) are analyzed taking into account the physical-chemical parameters of solids and spectroscopic parameters of ejected excited particles. Different mechanisms of the ejected excited particles formation for the explanation of the experimental data are considered.     

Spontaneous pattern formation induced by ion bombardment of binary compounds

A theory is developed that explains the genesis of the strikingly regular hexagonal arrays of nanoscale mounds that can form when a flat surface of a binary compound is subjected to normal-incidence ion bombardment. We find that the species with the higher sputter yield is concentrated at the peaks of the nanodots and that hysteretic switching between the flat and the hexagonally ordered state can occur as the sample temperature is varied. Surface ripples are predicted to emerge for a certain range of the parameters.     

The in situ cleaning of specimens in the field ion microscope by argon ion bombardment

The extensive adoption of argon bombardment cleaning techniques for specimens used in LEED and Auger studies, and the frequent, and often difficult, requirement of preparing field ion emitters, and their supports, free from contamination, led to the investigation of in situ argon ion bombardment of specimens in the field of ion microscope, both from the point of view of the efficiency of the cleaning process, and the investigation of ensuing surface and lattice damage, a task to which the technique of field ion microscopy is particularly appropriate.Experiments were carried out in some detail for tungsten specimens, and subsequently extended to the hexagonal metal, rhenium, with a view to obtain information on the thermally annealed end forms of such metals. In both cases, very small radius clean thermally annealed specimens could be prepared.     

Molecular dynamics simulation of bipartite bimetallic clusters under low-energy argon ion bombardment

The evolution of bipartite bimetallic atomic clusters within 5 ps under bombardment with monoenergetic argon ions at the initial energy ranging from 1 eV to 1.4 keV has been simulated by the classical molecular dynamics method with a target obtained from Ni?Al and Cu?Au clusters consisting of 78 and 390 atoms, equally divided between the corresponding monometallic parts, the simulated pairs of which have different heats of intermixing. The changes in the potential energy and temperature, the sputtering yields, and the intensity of the ion-stimulated movement of atoms at the interface of the monometallic parts of clusters of both sizes have been determined as functions of the energy of the bombardment.     

Raman scattering characterization of a carbon coating after low-energy argon ion bombardment

The characteristic of Raman scattering spectra of a carbon coating, which was modified by radio frequency argon plasma, has been investigated. The argon ion bombardment causes changes in the microstructure and amount of stress in the coating. Raman scattering spectra are discussed in terms of intensity, bandwidth and wavenumber. The evolvement of Raman spectra shows the following behavior with increasing bombardment time: the intensity changes of the disordered D band, amorphous D″ band and graphite G band could be separated into several stages; low-energy argon ion bombardment over a short period can reduce the number of defects in the carbon coating, while a larger bombardment period can increase the number of defects; the widths of the D and G bands both increase, while that of the D″ band decreases; the wavenumbers of all the three bands fluctuate according to the changes in electronic configuration and amount of stress in the carbon coating.     

The influence of argon ion bombardment on the electrical and optical properties of clean silicon surfaces

The effect of low energy noble gas ion bombardment on the electrical and optical properties of Si(211) surfaces has been investigated by surface conductivity and field effect measurements, ellipsometry and AES. With this combination of techniques, information is obtained concerning the electrical properties, the chemical composition and the damage of the surface layer. Upon ion bombardment in the energy range of 500–2000 eV, ellipsometry shows the formation of a damaged surface layer with optical properties close to those of an evaporated amorphous silicon film. In order to measure the conductivity changes as sensitive as possible, nearly intrinsic silicon crystals were used. For the clean, 5200 Ω cm Si(211) surface, bombarded only with a mass-analyzed argon ion beam, a small increase in conductivity is found to occur after a small ion dose (saturation after 5 × 10¹⁴ ions cm^?2 while after 5 × 10¹³ ions cm^?2 already half of the increase has occurred). The effect was found to be independent of ion energy between 500 and 2000 eV. As the field effect signal did not change after this treatment, it is concluded that the surface state density in the neighbourhood of the Fermi level shows a slight decrease.     

Investigations on the effect of argon ion bombardment on the structural and optical properties of crystalline gallium antimonide

The effects of bombardment of 250 keV argon ions in n-type GaSb at fluences 2×10¹⁵ and 5×10¹⁵ ions cm^?2 were investigated by high-resolution X-ray diffraction (HRXRD), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). HRXRD studies revealed the presence of radiation-damaged layer (strained) peak in addition to the substrate peak. The variation in the lattice constant indicates the strain in the bombarded region. The out-of-plane (?_⊥) and in-plane strains (?_|) determined from the profiles of several symmetric and asymmetric Bragg reflections, respectively, were found to change with the ion fluence. Simulations of XRD patterns using dynamical theory of X-ray scattering (single-layer model) for the damaged layer yielded good fits to the recorded profiles. FTIR transmission studies showed that the optical density (α·d) of GaSb bombarded with different fluences increases near the band edge with increase in ion fluence, indicating the increase in the defect concentration. The density of the defects in the samples bombarded with different fluences was in the range of 3.20×10²¹–3.80×10²¹ cm^?3. The tailing energy estimated from the transmission spectra was found to change from 12.0 to 58.0 meV with increasing ion fluences, indicating the decrease of crystallinity at higher fluences. SEM micrographs showed the swelling of the bombarded surface of about 0.33 μm for the fluence of 2×10¹⁵ ions cm^?2, which increased to 0.57 μm for the fluence of 5×10¹⁵ ions cm^?2.     

Evolution of pattern formation under ion bombardment of substrate

Processes of self-organization described by a nonlinear evolution equation of sixth order are considered on substrate surfaces after ion beam bombardment. Five families of exact solutions are found for the nonlinear evolution equation. A numerical method enabling one to solve the boundary value problem is presented. Simulation of the pattern formation and classification of their profiles are given. The influence of the third, fifth order dispersion terms and a nonlinear diffusion term on processes of the pattern formation is discussed.     

Influence of ion bombardment on residual stresses in diamond-like carbon films

The dependence of internal residual stresses in thin diamond-like carbon films grown by the PECVD technique on the most important growth parameters such as the power of the exciting RF discharge and the substrate bias potential is considered. The results have shown that the mechanical stresses in films reach the uppermost value of 1.9 GPa at the smallest values of power and potential. The stress decreases with the growth of both parameters and has only a slight dependence on the film thickness in the range 0.1–1 μm. The bombardment of the obtained films by argon ions with energy of 300 keV and phosphorus ions with energy of 200 keV has resulted in the reduction of compressive stress with the ion dose growth down to its inversion. AFM study of the bombarded films has revealed significant changes in their surface morphology.     

Influence of ion bombardment on the photoluminescence response of embedded CdS nanoparticles

Semiconductor nanoparticles (CdS) were fabricated by an inexpensive chemical route using polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as the dielectric host matrix. Nano-CdS in PVA were subjected to ion irradiation (using oxygen, chlorine and gold) in the medium energy range (80–100 MeV) and under fluence variation of 10¹¹–10¹³ ions/cm². The nature of light emission was found to be drastically different in each of the three cases. Photoluminescence spectra of oxygen irradiated samples exhibit band edge emission (2.8 eV) as well as trap related emission (1.76 eV) whereas band edge emission is found to be bleached out for chlorine ion irradiated nano-CdS. The intense broad PL peaks, noticeable in the case of gold ion irradiated samples suggest superposition of the two peaks — namely, band edge emission and trap related emission. Furthermore, in the case of gold ion irradiated nano-CdS, energy shift in the PL spectra reveals variation in size distribution caused by the extra pressure effect of heavy gold ion beams. The mechanism of such a difference as a result of ion irradiation-type and ion-fluence is discussed in detail.     

Study on formation and shape of carbon nanotips depending on ion bombardment

Carbon nanotips were grown from carbon film deposited on silicon substrate by plasma-enhanced hot filament chemical vapor deposition. The carbon film and carbon nanotips were investigated by scanning electron microscopy and micro-Raman spectrometry, respectively. The results indicate that the carbon film is composed of amorphous carbon and the carbon nanotips are characteristic of nanographite, and their formation and shapes depend on ion bombardment strongly. Simultaneously, the number of forming the carbon nanotips is increased by the ion bombardment. Because there are ion deposition and sputtering-etching in the process of growing of the carbon nanotips, the theory related to ion deposition and sputtering was used to obtain their formation condition and analyze effects of the ion bombardment on their shapes and the number of forming them.     

Influence of ion bombardment induced radiation damages in the crystal lattice on the angular regularlties in ion scattering

The paper examines the angular, spatial and energy distribution of ions scattered by various faces of silicon and germanium single crystals. It is shown that, due to the orderly arrangement of atoms in the crystal lattice, the orientation effects in the angular, spatial and energy distributions are observed at temperatures exceeding the annealing temperature of ion bombardment induced radiation damage. At high temperatures of the sample a reduction of the anisotropy in the angular, spatial and energy distributions of scattered ions was observed which is due to the changing transparency of the crystal resulting from the thermal vibrations of atoms in the lattice.

Results of investigations testify to the possibility of using the orientation dependences of phenomena occurring during the interaction of ions with crystals for determining the annealing temperature of ion bombardment damage and for studying the kinetics of the process of ion bombardment. It is shown that further studies along the same lines as conducted by the authors of this paper could develop a technique for the quantitative estimation of ion bombardment damage in crystals and also in thin epitaxial films.     

Water formation on oxygen exposure of some hydrides of intermetallic compounds

It is found that a large number of metal hydrides such as hydrides of materials in Ca−Mg−Ni can form water when exposed to O₂ largely without signs for concomitant substrate oxidation. One can speak of a catalytic reaction in this connection as the H-depleted metal matrix can in most cases be rehydrided and water synthesis repeated on exposure to O₂. In some cases a considerable portion of the H combustion reaction takes place in a matter of seconds. Some of the metal hydrides such as hydrides of CaNi₄B, CeNi₃, and YbNi₂, are relatively stable concerning decomposition of the alloy by the product water, while others, for example hydrides of CaNi₃, and CaNi₂, are rapidly decomposed by the product water forming the hydroxide of the electropositive metal. They also produce fine ferromagnetic Ni-particles which could be interesting for other catalytic purposes. Guest professor, work also performed at University of California at San Diego where support by a grant from DOE, Basic Energy Sciences, is acknowledged.     

Electron work function of intermetallic compounds in the cerium-cobalt system

The concentration dependences of the electron work function for lithium samples in the cobaltrich region of the state diagram of the Ce-Co binary mixture is studied by the contact potential difference method at 20°C. It is shown that the electron work function isotherm has the shape of a broken line with kinks corresponding to intermetallic compounds formed in the cerium-cobalt binary system.     

XPS studies of ion bombardment damage of iron—sulfur compounds

Chemical reduction on the surface of iron—sulfur compounds due to ion bombardment has been studied by photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS or ESCA). In addition to the “chemical” nature of surface reduction due to excitations and interactions of valence electrons, radiation-induced changes may also involve such factors as ion—surface chemical interactions and the volatilities of the components. Specifically, the data suggest that after ion bombardment, the reduced metallic iron co-exists with the relatively non-volatile elemental sulfur on the surface, in contrast to the loss of the volatile anion components from halogen and oxygen compounds.