ATOMIC TRANSPORT IN THERMAL SPIKE INDUCED ION MIXING

Abstract

A simple relationship between the ratio of atomic transport induced by ion mixing and the activation energies for the impurity diffusion of constituents in a bilayer is presented to describe quantitatively the symmetric and asymmetric atomic transport in the thermal spike induced ion mixing. The model predicts fairly satisfactorily the trend of experimental observations in the bilayer systems which have near zero heats of mixing and relatively high spike activation energies. For instance, the Pd/Co bilayer system shows nearly symmetric atomic transport, since its constituents have similar activation energies for the impurity diffusion.