Sputtered atom ejection from Ge and the annealing of ion bombardment induced disorder

Abstract

It has been previously established that it is necessary to keep single targets of Ge and Si above a certain critical temperature T_a before one can obtain an ejection pattern indicative of surface order. In the following work, we report on the dependence of the disorder to order transition temperature, T_a on the incident ion mass, the dose rate and the crystallography of the target. The disorder to order transition temperature, T_a has been measured for 5, 10 and 15 keV Ar⁺, K⁺ and Ne⁺ bombardment of (111), (110) and (100) Ge, using the sputtered atom ejection pattern to indicate the restitution of order. The dose rate dependence of the transition temperature, T_a , was used to calculate activation energies for the transition occurring.