Investigation of energetic ion-induced mixing in Bi/Ge system

Abstract

The present study is carried out for the investigation of energetic ion beam mixing in the Bi/Ge system, induced by electronic excitation. The system Ge/Bi/C was deposited on Si substrate at room temperature in the high vacuum deposition system and irradiated using Au ions of 120 MeV at the fluences 1 × 1013, 5 × 1013 and 1 × 1014 ions/cm2. The top layer of carbon was deposited as the protecting layer to avoid oxidation. The swift heavy ions (SHI)-induced interface mixing was studied by Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy (RBS) for depth profiles and compositions, grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD) for phase identification and atomic force microscopy (AFM) for surface roughness. We have calculated the mixing rate, mixing efficiency and inter-diffusion coefficient for the Bi/Ge system. We observed that the thickness of the mixed region increased with increasing fluence. In the GIXRD pattern, no new crystalline phase formation was observed after irradiation, the mixed region may be in an amorphous form. The mixing effect is explained in the framework of the thermal spike model.