Formation and characterization of perpendicular mode Si ripples by glancing angle O2+ sputtering at room temperature

Abstract

Off-normal low energy ion beam sputtering of solid surfaces often leads to morphological instabilities resulting in the spontaneous formation of ripple structures in nanometer length scales. In the case of Si surfaces at ambient temperature, ripple formation is found to take place normally at lower incident angles with the wave vector parallel to the ion beam direction. The absence of ripple pattern on Si surface at larger angles is due to the dominance of ion beam polishing effect. We have shown that a gentle chemical roughening of the starting surface morphology can initiate ripple pattern under grazing incidence ion beam sputtering (θ>64° with respect to the surface normal), where the ripple wave vector is perpendicular to the ion beam direction. The characteristics of the perpendicular mode ripples are studied as a function of pristine surface roughness (2–30 nm) and projectile fluence (5×1016–1.5×1018 O atoms cm−2). The quality of the morphological structure is assessed from the analysis of ion induced topological defects.