Effect of composition on damage accumulation in ternary ZnO-based oxides implanted with heavy ions

Thin films of wurtzite MgxZn1-xO (x <= 0.3) grown by molecular beam epitaxy and wurtzite CdxZn1-xO (x <= 0.05) grown by metal organic chemical vapor deposition were implanted at room temperature with 150 keV Er+ ions and 200 keV Au+ ions in a wide dose range. Damage accumulation was studied by Rutherford backscattering/channeling spectrometry. Results show that the film composition affects the damage accumulation behavior in both MgZnO and CdZnO dramatically. In particular, increasing the Mg content in MgZnO results in enhanced damage accumulation in the region between the bulk and surface damage peaks characteristically distinguished in the pure ZnO. However, the overall damage accumulation in MgZnO layers, as well as in pure ZnO, exhibits saturation with increasing ion dose and MgZnO cannot be amorphized even at the highest ion dose used (3 X 10(16) Er/cm(2)). Increasing the Cd content in CdZnO affects the saturation stage of the damage accumulation and leads to an enhancement of damage production in both Cd and Zn sublattices. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3467532]