Wen-bin Fan et al 2006 Nanotechnology 17 1878 doi:10.1088/0957-4484/17/8/012
Wen-bin Fan, Le-jun Qi, Hai-tong Sun, You-yuan Zhao and Ming Lu
Show affiliationsWe report a method to modify Si nanostructures on Si(100) by Ar+ ion sputtering, which we call post ion milling, or PIM. The effect of PIM on the nanodot modification was found to strongly depend on the value of ion flux utilized. For the ion flux of 80 µA cm−2 both the lateral and vertical dot sizes do not change significantly with the milling time, while for the ion flux of 15 µA cm−2 these sizes are dramatically reduced. The effect of PIM is attributed to a surface morphology transition process from a starting steady surface state to a target one. However, the final steady state surface morphology is not necessarily identical to the target one, but influenced by both the starting and target surface morphologies. Our results indicate that, given sufficiently low ion flux and low ion energy, very small nanostructures can be readily achieved via PIM.
81.07.-b Nanoscale materials and structures: fabrication and characterization
73.20.At Surface states, band structure, electron density of states
68.35.B- Structure of clean surfaces (and surface reconstruction)
Surfaces, interfaces and thin films
Issue 8 (28 April 2006)
Received 4 November 2005, in final form 30 January 2006
Published 15 March 2006
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