Atomistic Study of the Evolution of Nanoclusters in Ion Beam Synthesis

Ion implantation is an established tool to synthesize or to modify buried low-dimensional nanostructures (e.g. nanoclusters), which have become the basis of numerous technological applications. According to our current understanding of ion beam synthesis the evolution of nanostructures is determined by the competition between ballistic and thermodynamic effects. In this work it is shown, that a sound understanding of the diffusional interaction dynamics of nanoclusters can be achieved by kinetic 3D lattice Monte-Carlo simulations. In particular, the exploitation of the cluster size-concentration dependence (the Gibbs-Thomson relation) under pure thermal or ion irradiation conditions provides a wealth of physical information relevant for ion beam synthesis. Furthermore, evidence is presented, that within a certain parameter window of irradiation conditions collisional mixing induced nucleation of nanoclusters occurs.