Structure and band gap determination of irradiation-induced amorphous nano-channels in LiNbO₃

The irradiation of lithium niobate with swift heavy ions results in the creation of amorphous nano-sized channels along the incident ion path. These nano-channels are on the order of a hundred microns in length and could be useful for photonic applications. However, there are two major challenges in these nano-channels characterization: (i) it is difficult to investigate the structural characteristics of these nano-channels due to their very long length and (ii) the analytical electron microscopic analysis of individual ion track is complicated due to electron beam sensitive nature of lithium niobate. Here, we report the first high resolution microscopic characterization of these amorphous nano-channels, widely known as ion-tracks, by direct imaging them at different depths in the material, and subsequently correlating the key characteristics with electronic energy loss of ions. Energetic Kr ions (⁸⁴Kr²² with 1.98 GeV energy) are used to irradiate single crystal lithium niobate with a fluence of 2 × 10¹⁰ ions/cm², which results in the formation of individual ion tracks with a penetration depth of ∼180 μm. Along the ion path, electron energy loss of the ions, which is responsible for creating the ion tracks, increases with depth under these conditions in LiNbO₃, resulting in increases in track diameter of a factor of ∼2 with depth. This diameter increase with electronic energy loss is consistent with predictions of the inelastic thermal spike model. We also show a new method to measure the band gap in individual ion track by using electron energy-loss spectroscopy