Production of ordered silicon nanocrystals by low-energy ion sputtering

By R. Gago, L. Vázquez, R. Cuerno, M. Varela, C. Ballesteros, J. Albella. 2001

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We report on the production of ordered assemblies of silicon nanostructures by means of irradiation of a Si (100) substrate with 1.2 keV Ar+ ions at normal incidence. Atomic force and high-resolution transmission electron microscopies show that the silicon structures are crystalline, display homogeneous height, and spontaneously arrange into short-range hexagonal ordering. Under prolonged irradiation (up to 16 h) all dot characteristics remain largely unchanged and a small corrugation develops at long wavelengths. We interpret the formation of the dots as a result of an instability due to the sputtering yield dependence on the local surface curvature.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Computational Mechanics, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/30acd8c81cc262d6aeb412a86df5610729e0c2d8