Modification of ceramic coatings by swift heavy ions

Throughout the last decade, swift heavy ions (SHI) of some MeV/amu kinetic energy have revealed to be an excellent tool for the “nano-modification” of materials. Besides the already existing ion-track technology, which makes use of the structural and property alterations of the material inside the tracks of spatially isolated single-ion impacts, we have recently found that thin oxide films can be restructured on a sub-μm scale by triggering structural instabilities and subsequent self-assembly processes with high fluence SHI irradiation. This way, sometimes, quite regular arrays of nano-structures at the surface and at the interface of the layer system can be achieved, which cover a large area. In the present paper, we will briefly summarize our results on self-organization effects in thin oxide-films on Si and SiO2, driven by capillary forces (dewetting phenomena), by ion-beam induced tensile stresses (lamellae and “nano-tower” formation) and by the pressure pulse due to the density change upon transient melting of the material inside the ion-track (ripple formation at the interface).