Analysis of Si crystal irradiated by highly-charged Ar ions using RBS-channeling technique

Abstract An ion-beam is one of the powerful tools applied in nanotechnology and nanoscience. It is expected that the application of highly-charged ion (HCI) beams, which have a higher reactivity in materials, would yield further developments in these fields. For effective applications of HCI beams, it is important to investigate any modifications of irradiated materials from a microscopic point of view. For this purpose, an irradiation-induced defect in a single crystal was analyzed by means of Rutherford backscattering-channeling (RBS) technique. In order to induce defects, Ar 6+ and Ar 9+ beams with an energy of 100 keV were irradiated onto a single crystal of Si. By means of a simple analysis, the depth distribution of disordered Si atoms induced by the irradiation was extracted from the observed RBS-C spectra. The present result implies that the productivity of defects in a Si crystal is enhanced for Ar 9+ ions compared with Ar 6+ ions in a limited region of the surface.