SRIM Simulation of Ion Beam Irradiation Effects on Oxide Thin Films

Abstract

In recent studies, multifunctional oxide thin films have been given attention because of their special properties, such as ferroelectricity, gas sensitivity, and magnetism. Ion beam irradiation arose as a well-developed technique for tuning such properties. This study investigates the ion beam irradiation effects of He, Ni, and Kr ions on BiFeO3, SnO2, and ZnO thin films, respectively. The study utilized the 2013 version of Stopping and Range of Ions in Matter (SRIM) software to identify ion trajectory distribution and oxygen target vacancy differences on the Transport of Ions in Matter (TRIM) calculation types at various ion energies. A greater distribution of ion trajectories and higher peaks of oxygen target vacancies in oxide thin films were generated from monolayer TRIM than full cascade TRIM for all ion–thin-film pairs. The monolayer TRIM is preferable for ion beam irradiation of oxide thin films with its greater oxygen target vacancies and ion trajectory distribution for better analysis of ferroelectric coercive fields, adsorbed oxygen ions interaction with gas molecules, and the emergence of green emission for photoluminescence. The use of SRIM allows an alternative yet more flexible way of analyzing beam irradiation effects on oxide films considered in this work without resorting to costly or sophisticated experimental setups, which are a usual approach considered in most of the work under this topic. As such, the results presented here provide an initial or complementary basis should irradiation effect experiments require analysis of ion trajectories and oxygen vacancies.