ABSTRACT
Patterning of surfaces using ion beams is being widely studied for
the last few years. Although a lot of work has been done in this
direction, yet there remains quite a number of unsolved problems
pertaining to this self-organization process. Interestingly, most of
the experimental studies have been done on elemental samples.
There exist a few studies on compound materials, but among them
studies on compound semiconductors are extremely rare. It is to be
borne in mind that sputtering in case of compound targets is pretty
much different from their elemental counterparts since preferential
sputtering plays a major role in such situations. The present article
is an attempt to review nanopatterning studies on SiGe surfaces
using low-energy ion beams. It is found that pattern formation
on such surfaces is greatly influenced by a number of factors like
sputter yield effects, initial surfacemorphologies, constitution of the
ion beam, and other effects. Discussion of such effects provides a
thorough insight into the sputter patterning phenomenon of such
compound semiconductors. This will further help in addressing the
open problems that exist in this area of research.
