Anisotropic Scaling of Ripple Morphologies on High-Fluence Sputtered Silicon Articles uri icon

publication date

  • March 2009

start page

  • 1

end page

  • 7

issue

  • 11

volume

  • 79

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 1098-0121

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1550-235X

abstract

  • The evolution of Si(100) surfaces has been studied during oblique high-fluence ion sputtering by means of atomic force microscopy. The observed surface morphology is dominated by nanoscale ripples and kinetic roughening at small and large lateral scales, respectively. The large-scale morphology exhibits anisotropic scaling at high fluences with different roughness exponents alfan = 0.76 ± 0.04 and alfap = 0.41 ± 0.04 in the directions normal and parallel to the incident ion beam, respectively. Comparison to the predictions of single field and two-field ("hydrodynamic") models of ion erosion suggests the relevance of nonlinearities that are not considered in the simpler anisotropic Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation.