THE COMPOSITION CHANGES INDUCED BY SURFACE ROUGHENING AND MIXING DURING THE ION PROFILING OF MULTILAYERS

The kinetics of the surface composition during the depth profiling of multilayered structures is considered by the proposed phenomenological models. In order to emphasize the composition changes on the surface produced by surface roughness development and ion mixing separately, t he calculated results from the two different models are compared. The first one includes the processes of sputtering and surface migration o f atoms, and second one includes the processes of ion mixing between l ayers and sequential removal of surface monolayers (layer by layer). T he main conclusion made from the qualitative analysis of the results i s that the effects induced by these two different processes are quite similar and the interpretation of such experimental results is not so obvious in many cases. Copyright (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.