SIMULATIONS OF SPUTTERING INDUCED ROUGHENING OF AMORPHOUS DIAMOND FILMS DEPOSITED WITH MASS SEPARATED KILOELECTRONVOLT ION-BEAMS

Atomic scale simulations are performed for the ion bombardment induced roughening of the amorphous diamond films, when the films are deposit ed by using kiloelectronvolt mass separated ion beams operated in the upper limit of practical deposition energies up to 20 keV. The results show that the roughness due to sputtering erosion is by a factor of 3 to 3 larger than roughness observed in experiments. The experimentall y observed roughness is obtained only when moderate surface relaxation within the distance of next nearest neighbors is included in the simu lations. The results suggest that atomic scale relaxation of sputterin g induced topography occurs during the deposition. (C) 1997 American I nstitute of Physics.