A study of nitrogen implantation in aluminium—a comparison of experimental results and computer simulation

Abstract It is known that nitrogen ion implantation into aluminium leads to the formation of AlN. The aim of this work is to investigate the effect of ion energy, current density and dose on low energy nitrogen ion implantation. For this purpose, aluminium bulk samples, with a purity of 99.9%, were implanted with molecular nitrogen ions (N 2 + ) at energies of 2, 3, 4 and 5 keV with a current densities of 1 μA cm −2 and 5 μA cm −2 for each ion energy. The ion doses for these experiments range from 6×10 16 and 3×10 17 ions cm −2 . The concentration profiles of nitrogen ions implanted into aluminium were measured by X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) and these were compared with the profiles created using computer simulation models SUSPRE [SUSPRE, Surrey University Sputter Profile Resolution from Energy deposition program V (1.4), 1987] and SATVAL [J. Sielanko, W. Szyszko, Surf. Sci. 161 (1985) 101; J. Sielanko, W. Szyszko, Nucl. Instr. Meth. Phys. Res. B 16 (1986) 101]. The chemical composition and chemical structure of the implanted aluminium were investigated by XPS and Angle Resolved X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (ARXPS).