Nonlinear compositional and morphological evolution of ion irradiated GaSb prior to nanostructure formation.

ABSTRACT: Low-energy ion irradiation of III-V semiconductor surfaces can lead to the formation of regular hexagonal dot patterns at the surface. We present experimental and computational results for ion irradiation of GaSb surfaces which elucidate the nature of the coupled compositional and morphological pattern-formation mechanisms. We demonstrate by in-situ grazing-incidence small-angle x-ray scattering (GISAXS) and angle-resolved Auger electron spectroscopy (ARAES) that the emergence of an altered compositional depth profile is essential to induce morphological changes at the surface. This morphological evolution of the surface follows nucleation-and-growth kinetics. Furthermore, we show from massive-scale molecular dynamics (MD) simulations that the compositional depth profile evolution leads to

SUBMITTER: Lively MA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7237666 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature