Nanopatterning surfaces by grazing incidence swift heavy ion irradiation

Nanopatterned surfaces play a key role for many applications exploiting unique features such as an enhanced surface area, long- and short-ranged morphology modulations or a spatial variation of electronic and chemical properties. Ion beam irradiation has been frequently used for nanostructuring bulk materials because it is efficient, fast, and cost-effective. In this paper we show that ion irradiation under extremely grazing incidence in conjunction with other scalable processing methods such as wet etching and thermal annealing, is a perfect tool for nanopatterning of dielectric surfaces. We demonstrate that by tuning ion energy and fluence, one can select different surface nanopattern morphologies like individual chains of nanohillocks, nanostripes, or nanoscaled ripples. Furthermore, chemical etching of the irradiated surface can be used to create a negative replica of the nanopattern as only the material making up the surface track is susceptible to the etching process and is thus removed. Also, a removal of the surface track can be achieved by thermal annealing in vacuum. All these presented strategies open up new ways for achieving control over nanoscale surface modifications using swift heavy ion beams