Nanohole pattern formation on Ge by focused ion beam and broad beam

The morphology of surfaces strongly influences optical, electrical, and magnetic properties of thin films. Using low energy ion beam sputtering different self-organized periodic patterns can be obtained. These are ripple patterns with periodicities in the nanometre range for oblique ion incidence and hexagonal dot patterns on compound materials for normal incidence. Low energy ion beam sputtering of Ge at normal incidence using a 5 keV Ga+ focused ion beam (FIB) produces periodic nanohole patterns. In this work we studied the flux dependence of nanohole formation using FIB technique and compared the results with patterns produced by broad Ga+ beam sputtering with a six orders of magnitude smaller ion flux. In both cases Ga+ ions with an energy of 5 keV at normal incidence were used. Obtaining the same results shows that nanohole formation is independent of flux over a few orders of magnitude and that rastering of the FIB does not add extra contributions.