Abstract
Structural changes of α-FeSi2 induced by electron beam irradiation have been investigated using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Single crystals of Si(111) were implanted with 120 keV Fe ions at −150 °C to a fluence of 1.0×1017 /cm2, followed by thermally annealing at 350–550 °C. Cross-sectional and plan-view TEM observations revealed the formation of the metastable α-FeSi2 in the annealed samples. Under high-energy electron beam irradiation, the α-phase changed to a metastable crystalline phase whose structure is close to the CsCl structure. The phase transformation was caused mainly by displacement damage processes and suggests a low displacement energy for Fe atoms (<9 eV). To explain these observations, it was considered that vacancies in α-FeSi2 are responsible for the electron irradiation-induced phase transformation.
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