The effects of low-energy ion impacts on graphite observed by scanning tunneling microscopy

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
A focused ion beam has been used to expose graphite substrates to gallium ions with kinetic energies ranging from 10 eV to 2.5 keV. The effects of the ion impacts on the substrates were then observed by scanning tunneling microscopy. For landing energies of 250 eV and above, essentially every ion impact produces an amorphous, cluster-like feature of 1–5 nm in diameter that protrudes from the substrate by about one-tenth of the feature diameter. As ion energy is decreased below 250 eV the probability that an ion impact will cause a protruding features decreases, until, for landing energies of 10 eV and below, it becomes negligible.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: