Accumulation of ion beam induced disorder in strontium titanate

Abstract

Damage accumulation has been investigated in single crystal SrTiO 3(1 0 0) irradiated with 1.0 MeV Au 2+ by using in situ Rutherford backscattering spectrometry in channeling geometry (RBS/C). Samples were irradiated at temperatures of 170, 300 and 350 K with ion fluences ranging from 0.05 to 0.60 Au 2+/nm 2. The in situ RBS/C analysis indicates that the relative disorder in both Sr and Ti sublattices shows a strong sigmoidal dependence on ion dose. After an ion fluence of 0.30 Au 2+/nm 2 at 170 K, the buried region at the damage peak (∼60 nm) becomes fully amorphous, which corresponds to a dose of ∼0.39 dpa. For irradiation at 300 and 350 K, ion fluences of 0.40 Au 2+/nm 2 (∼0.52 dpa) and 0.45 Au 2+/nm 2 (∼0.59 dpa) are necessary to achieve an amorphous state at the damage peak, respectively.