Study of the surface and bulk defects induced by the heavy ions in insulators

The study of the damage induced by heavy ions in volume of insulators, allows us to make a classification of insulators in two categories: the amorphisable materials and non amorphisable materials. The non amorphisable materials results raise several questions relating to the defects origin on the surface and the sensitivity of the techniques used to characterize them. Our study concern the creation of defects on the surface, near the surface and in volume of three insulators with different amorphisability: Y₃Fe₅O₁₂, CaF₂ and Al₂O₃. For that three techniques of characterization were used: the surface profilometry, the channeling Rutherford backscattering and atomic force microscopy. Our results show that the response of surface is a consequence of what occurs in volume. Moreover the sensitivity of non amorphisable materials to the heavy ions is identical to that of amorphisable materials. (author)