Paper AS-ThP8
Molecular Dynamics Simulations of 30 keV and 2 keV Ga in Si

Thursday, October 18, 2007, 5:30 pm, Room 4C

Molecular dynamics simulations of 2 keV and 30 keV Ga bombardment of Si(011) at a grazing angle of 88 degrees show that the dynamics effectively follow scattering from a flat surface and that very little energy is transferred to the substrate. The inclusion of an adatom above the surface allows for the coupling of the energy of motion parallel to the surface into the substrate. The adatom and one other Si atom eject and motion in the substrate occurs down to a depth of 13 Å. These results show that some surface roughness is necessary for sputtering to occur at very grazing angles of incidence (i.e., high incident angles). Therefore, it is unlikely that focused ion beam polishing can create a non-facetted or atomically smooth surface.