Applications of gas cluster ion beams for materials processing

Irradiation effects of gas cluster ion beams have been studied experimentally and simulated theoretically for various ion species, energies and materials combinations. It is shown that cluster ion-surface interactions offer new opportunities for surface processing such as very shallow implantation (less than 0.1 μm in Si), very high rate sputtering (two orders of magnitude higher than for monomer ions), lateral sputtering effects, atomically smooth surface formation (average surface roughness less than 1 nm), thin surface layer formation at low substrate temperature etc.