Nanostructured surfaces

PbTe, SnTe, and GeTe surface nanostructures formed by Ar+ ions sputtering
Zayachuk D.M.1, Slynko V.E.2, Buga Cs.3, Csik A.3
1 Lviv Polytechnic National University, S. Bandera Str., 12, Lviv-79013, Ukraine 
E-mail: zayachuk@polynet.lviv.ua
2 Institute for Problems of Material Science NASU, Chernivtsy Branch, Vilde Str., 5, Chernivtsy-58001, Ukraine
3 Institute for Nuclear Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences (ATOMKI), H-4026, Debrecen, Bem sqr. 18/c, Hungary

Processes of forming of different structures on solid surfaces subjected to energy ion bombardment and their potential applications in various technologies and experimental techniques have been extensively studied for a long time. But many important issues concerning nucleation, formation, spatial ordering of such structures, the ability to control the processes are not fully understood and remain the subject of close attention and scientific discussions. The presented report focuses on some of these issues in the application to Pb, Sn, Ge tellurides, which are widely used in practice, in particular for IR radiation sources and detectors.
Recently we showed that sputtering of PbTe, SnTe, and GeTe crystal surfaces by Ar+ ion beams is preferential and one of the results of such sputtering is formation on the sputtering surface of the arrays of micro- and nanostructures whose shape and sizes can be changed [1,2]. Here we discuss morphology of the PbTe, SnTe, and GeTe surfaces nanostructured by Ar+ ion irradiation; forms, sizes, aspect ratios, planar distribution of the surface nanostructures, and their dependence on the chemical composition of the compounds under study, energy and time of surface sputtering; mutual transformation of the surface structures of different shape in the process of sputtering under the different energy and time modes; re-sputtering of the formed surface structures and formation of the new nanostructures on sputtered surfaces as well as the possible mechanisms of nucleation and formation of the surface dot based nanostructures.
1.	Zayachuk D.M., Slynko V.E., Csik A. Peculiar properties of preferential sputtering of PbTe, SnTe, and GeTe by Ar+ ion plasma // Mater. Sci. Semicond. Proc. 88 (2018) 103–108.
2.	Zayachuk D.M., Slynko V.E., Buga Cs., Csik A. Relative detection factor for quantification of Secondary Neutral Mass Spectrometry measurements of binary telluride PbTe // Vacuum 163 (2019) 99–102.