Plasma etching (or dry etching) is widely used in the fabrication of integrated circuits (IC). Anisotropic features are easily obtained by controlling reactive ion trajectories in plasma. Twisting and bowing are two main issues during high aspect ratio (HAR) feature etching. Twisting is, instead of a feature etching vertically, the feature twists or turns to the side. Mixing damage by ion bomba...

Silicon sputter yield under medium energy Ar+ ion bombardment is calculated via molecular dynamics, using a highly accurate interatomic potential for Ar–Si interactions derived from first-principles calculations. Unlike the widely used universal repulsive potentials such as the Moliere or ZBL parameterizations, this new potential, referred to as DFT-ArSi, is developed via localized basis densit...

As extensive experimental studies have shown, under certain conditions, ion bombardment of solid targets induces a random (self-affine) morphology on the ion-eroded surfaces. The rough morphology development is known to cause substantial variations in the sputtering yields. In this article, we present a theoretical model describing the sputter yields from random, self-affine surfaces subject to...

Please cite this article in press as: A. Wucher e silicon, Nucl. Instr. and Meth. B (2011), doi:10 The incorporation of carbon atoms into a silicon surface under bombardment with 40-keV C60 ions is investigated using time-of-flight mass spectrometry of sputtered neutral and ionized SinCm clusters. The neutral particles emitted from the surface are post-ionized by strong field infrared photoioni...

The effects of H2O vapor introduced during focused ion beam ~FIB! milling of diamond~100! are examined. In particular, we determine the yield, surface morphology, and microstructural damage that results from FIB sputtering and H2O-assisted FIB milling processes. Experiments involving 20 keV Ga bombardment to doses ;10 ions/cm are conducted at a number of fixed ion incidence angles, u. For each ...

The sputtering of low temperature rare-gas and molecular-gas solids by ion bombardment occurs through two different routes. Collision cascades initiated by momentum transferring collisions of ions with atoms of the solid are effective as they are in metals. The apparent surface binding energy is, however, much lower than the sublimation energy and there is a substantial low energy component to ...

We demonstrate that reflectance difference spectroscopy (RDS) is sensitive to defects induced by ion bombardment, located either in the topmost layer or in the subsurface region. Most importantly, these two kinds of defects can be spectrally discriminated, since the corresponding signatures in the RD spectrum arise from perturbations of different types of electronic states: The defects in the t...

Au nanoparticles, prepared by thermal evaporation under high vacuum condition on Si substrate, are irradiated with Au ions at different ion energies. During ion irradiation, embedding of nanoparticles as well as ejection of nano-clusters is observed. Ejected particles (usually smaller than those on the Si substrate) due to sputtering are collected on carbon-coated transmission electron microsco...

Graphene membranes have the potential to exceed the permeance and selectivity limits of conventional gas separation membranes. Realizing this potential in practical systems relies on overcoming numerous scalability challenges, such as isolating or sealing permeable defects in macroscopic areas of graphene that can compromise performance and developing methods to create high densities of selecti...

Silicon-chlorine-argon (Si-Cl2-Ar) atomic layer etching (ALE) is simulated using classical molecular dynamics (MD). The simulations provide a detailed view into the near-surface region during ALE processing. Bombardment of Ar+ ions creates mixed amorphous that significantly differs from picture ideal ALE. There also significant change in Si etch yield and product distribution as function ion fl...