Aluminium Nitride Thin Films Surface Smoothing by Argon Cluster Ions

In this paper, the opportunity of using an argon cluster ion beam for processing the surface of aluminium nitride polycrystalline thin films is studied. The treatment was carried out in two fundamentally different experimental modes, at high and low kinetic energy per atom in the cluster, 105 and 10 eV/atom, respectively. The possibility of highly effective smoothing of the surface of a nanostructured aluminium nitride thin film with a minimum depth of the removed (sputtered) material is demonstrated.