A study of ion implantation induced variation of crystalline phase of boron nitride

Abstract

The effect of ion irradiation on the variation of the crystalline phase of boron nitride has been studied by bombardment with low and high energy ions onto sp 2 -bonded hexagonal or turbostratic boron nitride(h-BN/t-BN) films. Low energy ion irradiation of the BN films has been performed with nitrogen, neon and argon ions of fluences of 10 16- 10 18 cm -2 in the range of energies 2-20 keV, where nuclear stopping is the dominant energy loss process of the incident ions in the films. Whereas high energy ion irradiation has been performed with nitrogen, boron, silicon and platinum ions of fluences of 3×10 15- 3×10 17 cm -2 in the energy range of 1-3 MeV, where the ratio of electronic stopping power to nuclear stopping power is in the range of 0.03-400. Fourier transform infrared(FTIR) spectroscopy and Auger electron spectroscopy(AES) have been used to evaluate the variation of the phase involved in B-N bonding. In the irradiation experiments with low energy ion, enhancement of FTIR peaks associated with sp 2 -bonded BN phase has been observed. Whereas in the high energy regime, the spectra of FTIR and AES measurements indicated the phase conversion from sp 2 -bonded to sp 3 -bonded BN.