Abstract
Magnesium oxide (MgO) has been of interest for several decades as a promising tunable broadband laser due to its vacancy defects (color centers). In this work we introduced color centers into MgO nanocube by electron irradiation in a transmission electron microscope (TEM). Square nano-holes were formed from the electron-exit face using 100 and 300keV electrons, and a broad O-vacancy (color-center) absorption peak around 4.1–6.6eV was observed by valence-electron energy-loss spectroscopy (VEELS). We investigated the mechanism of MgO damage by high-energy electron beams. The hole formation is believed to involve a mixed removal of diatomic MgO molecules as well as Mg and O species in stoichiometric proportion. Observations using high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) and VEELS suggest that bulk O-vacancies are generated near the electron-exit face, due to the forward momentum transferred from fast-electron collisions and the Coulomb attraction of negative O-ions by the positively charged MgO surface.
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