Surface topography development and ion mixing in the study of depth profiling of multilayered structures

The depth profiling in combination with sputtering of multilayered structures is considered by the proposed models. In order to emphasize the changes in the surface composition produced by the processes of surface topography development and ion mixing during profiling two different models are proposed and considered separately. The first one includes the processes of surface roughening as a result of sputtering and smoothing of rough surface as a result of surface atom migration (no mixing in the bulk of sample). The second model includes the sequential removal of surface atoms (no surface roughening) and ion mixing in the bulk of the sample. The dependencies of the main characteristics such as the amplitude and the shape of the peaks of the oscillations of the surface concentration, surface roughness and depth resolution on sputtering time and ion beam parameters are calculated and analyzed. The influence of the ion energy, angle of incidence, ion flux and substrate temperature to the depth profile of multilayered structure are studied. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.