Investigation of ion beam mixing threshold value in Mn/Si system using swift heavy ions

A metal/semiconductor system (a-Si/Mn/a-Si) was deposited on the silicon substrate using the electron beam evaporation method. These samples were irradiated using 80 MeV Ni and 100 MeV Ag ions at different fluences ranging from 1×10¹³ to 1×10¹⁴ ions/cm² for the investigation of mixing threshold. Pristine and irradiated samples have been characterized using Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy (RBS) for depth profile analysis and atomic force microscopy (AFM) for surface roughness study. RBS spectra revels that there is a mixing at 100 MeV Ag ion irradiations which increases with fluence, whereas there is no mixing observed at 80 Ni MeV ion irradiations. We have also tried to investigate the mixing threshold value in this system. The surface roughness, as investigated from AFM, has not significantly changed upon irradiation indicating no contribution of roughness in interface mixing.