Effects of nuclear and electronic stopping power on ion irradiation of silicon-based compounds

Ion irradiation is used to analyze and modify the structure of condensed matter. It can for instance be used to form and shape nanocrystals in solids. In research on materials for high radiation environments, ion beams function as a controlled source of irradiation for studying the basic mechanisms of ion-solid interactions and for analyzing the structure of materials by methods like Rutherford backscattering spectrometry. Understanding the fundamental processes that take place in a material under ion irradiation is important for all these applications of ion beams, and of great interest from a basic science point of view. The mechanisms involved during ion irradiation-induced displacement of atoms in uniform bulk solids are fairly well understood and described in the literature, but many unresolved questions remain regarding the structural modification caused by electronic interactions, and the radiation response of materials with phase boundaries. Especially ion irradiation of nanomaterials is a topic that is underactive research. The short-lived collision cascades caused by energetic ions in solids cannot be studied in experiments and are therefore often modeled in computer simulations. The amorphization of germanium and silicon nanocrystals in silica under ion irradiation is studied in simulations. The amorphization dose of nanocrystals is much lower than for bulk materials and it is furthermore found to depend on the size of the nanocrystals. The inelastic thermal spike model is explored as a method of incorporating electronic stopping effects into molecular dynamics. The simulations predict that local heating due to electronic stopping contributes to irradiation damage in both nanocrystals in silica and bulk silica. In silicon carbide, high electronic stopping is found to recrystallize irradiation damaged samples. Molecular dynamics simulations of inelastic thermal spikes support the hypothesis that the observed recrystallization is induced by local heating due to electronic stopping.

کلیدواژه ها:

radiation effects ، molecular dynamics method ، energy loss of particles ، nanostructured materials ، silicon ، germanium ، silicon compounds