Formation and characterization of perpendicular mode Si ripples by glancing angle O{sub 2}{sup +} sputtering at room temperature

Journal Article · Sat Aug 15 00:00:00 EDT 2009 · Journal of Applied Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3204664· OSTI ID:21361789

Mollick, S A; Ghose, D ^[1]

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1. Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Sector-1, Block-AF, Bidhan Nagar, Kolkata 700 064 (India)

Off-normal low energy ion beam sputtering of solid surfaces often leads to morphological instabilities resulting in the spontaneous formation of ripple structures in nanometer length scales. In the case of Si surfaces at ambient temperature, ripple formation is found to take place normally at lower incident angles with the wave vector parallel to the ion beam direction. The absence of ripple pattern on Si surface at larger angles is due to the dominance of ion beam polishing effect. We have shown that a gentle chemical roughening of the starting surface morphology can initiate ripple pattern under grazing incidence ion beam sputtering (theta>64 deg. with respect to the surface normal), where the ripple wave vector is perpendicular to the ion beam direction. The characteristics of the perpendicular mode ripples are studied as a function of pristine surface roughness (2-30 nm) and projectile fluence (5x10{sup 16}-1.5x10{sup 18} O atoms cm{sup -2}). The quality of the morphological structure is assessed from the analysis of ion induced topological defects.

• OSTI ID: 21361789
• Journal Information: Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 106, Issue 4; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.3204664; (c) 2009 American Institute of Physics; ISSN 0021-8979
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
AMBIENT TEMPERATURE
ION BEAMS
MORPHOLOGY
OXYGEN IONS
POLISHING
ROUGHNESS
SEMICONDUCTOR MATERIALS
SILICON
SPUTTERING
TEMPERATURE RANGE 0273-0400 K
TOPOLOGY
BEAMS
CHARGED PARTICLES
ELEMENTS
IONS
MATERIALS
MATHEMATICS
SEMIMETALS
SURFACE FINISHING
SURFACE PROPERTIES
TEMPERATURE RANGE