Diffusion of implanted nitrogen in the Cu(001) surface

LUCILA CRISTINA ; LILIANA GÓMEZ; RICARDO VIDAL

JOURNAL OF PHYSICS - D (APPLIED PHYSICS)

IOP PUBLISHING LTD

Lugar: Bristol; Año: 2010 vol. 43 p. 1853021 - 1853026

0022-3727

Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) was used to study the thermally activated diffusion processof low energy N+ implanted on the Cu(0 0 1) surface, a proposed model system forself-assembled nanostructures. The nitrogen diffusion was characterized as a function of thesubstrate temperature and the N+ implantation energy. An experiment that combines atemperature evolution followed by an AES depth profiling was done to clarify the type ofdiffusion. A comparison of the experimental results with kinetic Monte Carlo simulationssuggests a preferential diffusion of the nitrogen to the surface followed by nitridedecomposition.