Ion Beam Mixing - Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages of ion beam mixing as a means of synthesis over traditional modes of implantation include the process' ability to produce materials with high solute concentrations using lower amounts of irradiation, and better control of band gap variation and diffusion between layers. The cost of IM is also less prohibitive than that of other modes of film preparation on substrates, such as chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE).

Disadvantages include the inability to completely direct and control lattice displacements initiated in the process, which can result in an undesirable degree of disorder in ion mixed samples, rendering them unsuitable for applications in which precise lattice orderings are paramount. Ion beams cannot be perfectly directed, nor the collision cascade controlled, once IM effects propagate, which can result in leaking, electron diffraction, radiation enhanced diffusion (RED), chemical migration and mismatch. Additionally, all ion mixed samples must be annealed.