Mechanisms of silicon sputtering and cluster formation explained by atomic level simulations

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

Focused ion beams (FIB) are a common tool in nanotechnology for surface analysis, sample preparation for electron microscopy and atom probe tomography, surface patterning, nanolithography, nanomachining, and nanoprinting. For many of these applications, a precise control of ion-beam-induced processes is essential. The effect of contaminations on these processes has not been thoroughly explored but can often be substantial, especially for ultralow impact energies in the sub-keV range. In this paper we investigate by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations how one of the most commonly found residual contaminations in vacuum chambers (i.e., water adsorbed on a silicon surface) influences sputtering by 100 eV argon ions. The incidence angle was changed from normal incidence to close to grazing incidence. For the simulation conditions used in this work, the adsorption of water favours the formation of defects in silicon by mixing hydrogen and oxygen atoms into the substrate. The sputtering yield of silicon is not significantly changed by the contamination, but the fraction of hydrogen and oxygen atoms that is sputtered largely depends on the incidence angle. This fraction is the largest for incidence angles between 70 and 80° defined with respect to the sample surface. Overall, it changes from 25% to 65%.

Experimental and simulation-based investigation of He, Ne and Ar irradiation of polymers for ion microscopy

Secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) on the helium ion microscope (HIM) promises higher lateral resolution than on classical SIMS instruments. However, full advantage of this new technique can only be obtained when the interaction of He(+) or Ne(+) primary ions with the sample is fully controlled. In this work we investigate how He(+) and Ne(+) bombardment influences roughness formation and preferential sputtering for polymer samples and how they compare to Ar(+) primary ions used in classical SIMS by combining experimental techniques with Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations and SD_TRIM_SP modelling. The results show that diffusion coefficients for He, Ne and Ar in polymers are sufficiently high to prevent any accumulation of rare gas atoms in the polymers which could lead to some swelling and bubble formation. Roughness formation was also not observed. Preferential sputtering is more of a problem, with enrichment of carbon up to surface concentrations above 80%. In general, the preferential sputtering is largely depending on the primary ion species and the impact energies. For He(+) bombardment, it is more of an issue for low keV impact energies and for the heavier primary ion species the preferential sputtering is sample dependent. For He(+) steady state conditions are reached for fluences much higher than 10(18) ions/cm(2). For Ne(+) and Ar(+), the transient regime extends up to fluences of 10(17)-10(18) ions/cm(2). Hence, preferential sputtering needs to be taken into account when interpreting images recorded under He(+) or Ne(+) bombardment on the HIM.

Significant enhancement of negative secondary ion yields by cluster ion bombardment combined with cesium flooding

In secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), the beneficial effect of cesium implantation or flooding on the enhancement of negative secondary ion yields has been investigated in detail for various semiconductor and metal samples. All results have been obtained for monatomic ion bombardment. Recent progress in SIMS is based to a large extent on the development and use of cluster primary ions. In this work we show that the enhancement of negative secondary ions induced by the combination of ion bombardment with simultaneous cesium flooding is valid not only for monatomic ion bombardment but also for cluster primary ions. Experiments carried out using C60+ and Ar4000+ bombardment on silicon show that yields of negative secondary silicon ions can be optimized in the same way as by Ga+ and Cs+ bombardment. Both for monatomic and cluster ion bombardment, the optimization does not depend on the primary ion species. Hence, it can be assumed that the silicon results are also valid for other cluster primary ions and that results obtained for monatomic ion bombardment on other semiconductor and metal samples are also valid for cluster ion bombardment. In SIMS, cluster primary ions are also largely used for the analysis of organic matter. For polycarbonate, our results show that Ar4000+ bombardment combined with cesium flooding enhances secondary ion signals by a factor of 6. This can be attributed to the removal of charging effects and/or reduced fragmentation, but no major influence on ionization processes can be observed. The use of cesium flooding for the imaging of cells was also investigated and a significant enhancement of secondary ion yields was observed. Hence, cesium flooding has also a vast potential for SIMS analyses with cluster ion bombardment.