Energy dependent wavelength of the ion induced nanoscale ripple

TL;DR

This study investigates how the wavelength of nanoscale ripples on silicon surfaces varies with ion energy, revealing that beam scanning influences this relationship and proposing an energy dependence model considering surface diffusion effects.

Contribution

It introduces a new model for ripple wavelength dependence on ion energy, incorporating thermally activated and ion-induced surface diffusion effects.

Findings

Ripple wavelength increases with ion energy when beam scanning is used.

Ripple wavelength decreases with ion energy without beam scanning.

A proposed expression models the energy dependence of ripple wavelength considering surface diffusion.

Abstract

Wavelength variation of ion beam induced nanoscale ripple structure has received much attention recently due to its possible application in nanotechnology. We present here results of Ar$^+$ bombarded Si in the energy range 50 to 140 keV to demonstrate that with beam scanning the ripple wavelength increases with ion energy and decreases with energy for irradiation without ion beam scanning. An expression for the energy dependence of ripple wavelength is proposed taking into simultaneous effect of thermally activated surface diffusion and ion induced effective surface diffusion.