Abstract
Ion irradiation of semiconductors has emerged as a promising approach for fabricating self-organized nanosystems with high atomic precision, despite often being accompanied by undesirable phenomena. Exploring the mechanisms underlying structural transformations is crucial for assessing nanostructure array types under complex irradiation environments. By quantitatively calculating the thermodynamically driven processes and analyzing the impact of intrinsic structural parameters, distinct structural transformations in response to intense electronic excitation are systematically investigated in gallium antimonide (GaSb) and gallium arsenide (GaAs) systems. In high-energy regimes, the nanofibers layer of GaSb exhibits intriguing structural discrepancy, characterized by partial nanofibers with coherent boundaries, interspersed nanopores accompanied by antisite defects and Ga precipitates, distinguishing to a series of discontinuous latent tracks that emerged within cylindrical trajectories in GaAs. Furthermore, significant diffusion behaviors of the nanohillocks are discovered in GaAs, with higher average roughness than GaSb, driven by the gradient stress distribution influenced by the free-surface effects. The deposition energy for melting phase formation, Gibbs free energy, and Ga diffusion coefficients contribute to the distinctive structural features, evidencing relatively stable morphological configurations and higher irradiation resistance in GaAs. Consequently, special optoelectronic properties associated with structural discrepancies facilitate the design and optimization of material functionalities by irradiation technologies.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 113505 |
Journal | Materials and Design |
Volume | 248 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 2024 |
Funding
This research was funded by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2022YFE0124200 ), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 12322514 ), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2023TQ0186 , 2023\u202F M742062 ), the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of CPSF (No. GZC20231440 ), and the National Laboratory of Heavy Ion Accelerator in Lanzhou. EZ was supported by the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS), which is a US Department of Energy , Office of Science User Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory .
Keywords
- Intense electronic excitation
- Optical/optoelectronic performance
- Physical mechanism
- Structural transformation
- Thermal spike response