Evolution of ripple morphologies on silicon during sub-keV ion sputtering

It is well known that oblique low and medium energy (typically 0.1 – 100 keV) ion erosion of solid surfaces may lead to the formation of periodic ripple patterns with wavelengths ranging from 10 to 1000 nm. The ripples produced in this way are oriented either parallel or normal to the projection of the ion beam and their wavelength scales with ion energy. These structures have been found on a large variety of materials, such as semiconductors, metals, and insulating surfaces. The formation and early evolution of the ripple patterns can be qualitatively reproduced by a linear continuum equation derived by Bradley and Harper. At longer times, however, nonlinear terms have to be taken into account leading to nonlinear models based on the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation.
The evolution of Si(100) surfaces during oblique sub-keV ion sputtering has been studied in-situ and ex-situ by means of surface sensitive X-ray techniques, namely X-ray Reflectivity and Grazing Incidence Small Angle X-ray Scattering (GISAXS), and atomic force microscopy, respectively. The observed morphologies are dominated by nanoscale ripples at short lateral scales but exhibit kinetic roughening at larger distances. The roughening of the surface is found to depend strongly on the angle of incidence and even small changes of only 2° lead to very different roughening dynamics. The obtained experimental results will be compared to predictions of different nonlinear continuum models of ion erosion.