Influence of water contamination on the sputtering of silicon with low-energy argon ions investigated by molecular dynamics simulations

• Grégoire R. N. Defoort-Levkov,
• Alan Bahm and
• Patrick Philipp

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2022, 13, 986–1003, doi:10.3762/bjnano.13.86

• . Depending on the application, the ion beam energy is in the range of 10 to 30 keV when small spot sizes are required (i.e., spot sizes in the nanometre range) and at a few keV or even in the sub-keV range when low surface damage or minimized atomic mixing is required. One example is low-energy depth

• of the water molecules have been fragmented, the atomic mixing is facilitated by the presence of fragments in the amorphous region. Furthermore, at higher incidence angles we observe an increased rate of water dissociation. Conclusion In this work, we analysed the influence of the incidence angle on

A review of defect engineering, ion implantation, and nanofabrication using the helium ion microscope

• Frances I. Allen

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2021, 12, 633–664, doi:10.3762/bjnano.12.52

• Irradiation-induced restructuring The following applications have used localized helium ion irradiation in the HIM to change the morphology and/or internal structure of a material by ion-induced mass transport along surfaces, ion-induced collisional atomic mixing, and through stress gradients induced in

Site-controlled formation of single Si nanocrystals in a buried SiO₂ matrix using ion beam mixing

• Xiaomo Xu,
• Thomas Prüfer,
• Daniel Wolf,
• Hans-Jürgen Engelmann,
• Lothar Bischoff,
• René Hübner,
• Karl-Heinz Heinig,
• Wolfhard Möller,
• Stefan Facsko,
• Johannes von Borany and
• Gregor Hlawacek

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2883–2892, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.267

• treatment. In Figure 2, the results are visualized for 50 keV and 60 keV Si+ irradiations of thicker (14.5 nm SiO2 with 50 nm top Si) and thinner (7 nm SiO2 with 30 nm top Si) layer stacks, respectively. TRIDYN simulations reveal that ion irradiation leads to interface blurring due to ion-induced atomic

• mixing [28], which is the result of the collisional relocation of Si atoms into the buried SiO2 layer as well as the transport of oxygen atoms from the oxide into the top and bottom Si layers. The overlaying plots show the O/Si atomic ratio as a function of depth after the ion beam mixing and prior to

Numerical investigation of depth profiling capabilities of helium and neon ions in ion microscopy

• Patrick Philipp,
• Lukasz Rzeznik and
• Tom Wirtz

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 1749–1760, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.168

• SD_TRIM_SP to study preferential sputtering and atomic mixing in such samples up to a fluence of 1018 ions/cm2. Results show that helium primary ions are completely inappropriate for depth profiling applications with this kind of sample materials while results for neon are similar to argon. The latter is

• commonly used as primary ion species in SIMS. For the two heavier species, layers separated by 10 nm can be distinguished for impact energies of a few keV. These results are encouraging for 3D imaging applications where lateral and depth information are of importance. Keywords: atomic mixing; depth

• polymer samples as a function of ion bombardment conditions and sample composition to evaluate the different conditions for 3D depth profiling capabilities in ion microscopy. Of particular interest is the preferential sputtering and atomic mixing for the different irradiation conditions to determine the