MIET researches described the modeling of the structures formation in silicon dioxide by the FIB method
The research group showed the current results of their project dedicated to the formation of micro- and nanostructures by the focused ion beam method (FIB).
The project is being implemented for the first year and its partial research results became the subject of the scientific work "Study of silicon dioxide focused ion beam sputtering using electron microscopy imaging and level set simulation", which was published in the leading European journal Vacuum. It is indexed in the Scopus and Web of Science databases and is included in the first quartile (Q1) according to the Scimago Journal Rank (SJR).
The FIB is an example of surface nanostructuring using charged particles, a kind of lithography: a nanosized ion probe moves over the sample and locally removes material. The advantage of FIB is that it allows manufacturing objects of a given shape on substrates from almost any material, which makes the method promising for optical applications. The manufacturers usually use silicon dioxide as a substrate. In this case the structures formed in it are to meet high requirements for manufacturing accuracy, which are rather difficult to comply with due to the complexity of the processes of interaction between the FIB and the substance.
“The computer simulation significantly speeds up and simplifies the process of micro- and nanostructures formation,” says the project leader, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Alexander Rumyantsev. – So, our article describes the modeling of the structures formation of a given shape in silicon dioxide by the FIB method. This is a rather time-consuming task; such calculations were previously performed only for the single-crystal silicon.”
“In addition to the sputtering of multilayer structures, the project is also aimed at studying the processes of interaction of ions with binary materials,” adds Oleg Podorozhniy, project executor, graduate student at the Institute of PAM. “We have already written the next article related to experimental studies and Monte Carlo simulation of sputtering of another technologically important binary material – silicon carbide.”
According to the researchers, the project will significantly optimize the process of precision relief formation and minimize the use of the resource-consuming "try and error" method.