Multiwalled carbon nanotubes as masks against carbon and argon irradiation. A molecular dynamics study

Abstract Experiments showed that multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) can be used as masks against irradiation to create metallic nanowires in a substrate. In order to understand the limitations of this application, it is interesting to know the energy and number of carbon atoms emerging from the MWCNT after the irradiation and how the structure of the MWCNT is modified. Using a molecular dynamics code that we have previously developed, we have simulated the continuous irradiation of MWCNT with carbon and argon projectiles. We have obtained that the use of carbon instead of argon to irradiate the MWCNT increases de effectiveness of the MWCNTs as masks, due to the ability of the carbon projectiles to be part of the MWCNT structure and partially mend the damage produced during irradiation. We have analyzed the number, energy, and spatial distribution of the recoils generated during irradiation and the change of the MWCNT structure as a function of the incident energy (100 and 500 eV), fluence (up to 4.5 · 10 15 ions / cm 2 ), and number of shells (up to 5-shells) of the MWCNT. These results determine the effectiveness of MWCNT as a mask, being useful to understand whether the atoms emerging from the MWCNT produce damage in the substrate or not. We find that for carbon projectiles the efficiency of MWCNT as masks does not depend much on the fluence, but on the number of nanotube shells and projectile incident energy. On the other hand, for a given nanotube and fluence, we observe a threshold incident energy below which the nanotube acts as a perfect mask.