Morphological characterization of Ge ion implanted SiO2 matrix using multifractal technique

TL;DR

This study uses multifractal analysis to characterize the surface morphology of SiO2 layers implanted with Ge ions, revealing changes in surface complexity after annealing, with potential implications for material surface analysis.

Contribution

It introduces the application of 2D multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis to study ion-implanted SiO2 surfaces, highlighting the surface's multifractal nature and effects of annealing.

Findings

Multifractality is more pronounced after annealing.

Surface complexity varies with ion fluence.

Generalized Hurst exponents show nonlinear variation.

Abstract

200 nm thick SiO2 layers grown on Si substrates and Ge ions of 150 keV energy were implanted into SiO2 matrix with Different fluences. The implanted samples were annealed at 950 C for 30 minutes in Ar ambience. Topographical studies of implanted as well as annealed samples were captured by the atomic force microscopy (AFM). Two dimension (2D) multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MFDFA) based on the partition function approach has been used to study the surfaces of ion implanted and annealed samples. The partition function is used to calculate generalized Hurst exponent with the segment size. Moreover, it is seen that the generalized Hurst exponents vary nonlinearly with the moment, thereby exhibiting the multifractal nature. The multifractality of surface is pronounced after annealing for the surface implanted with fluence 7.5X1016 ions/cm^2.