Sputtering yields of magnesium hydroxide [Mg(OH)₂] by noble-gas ion bombardment

Abstract

Magnesium oxide (MgO) is widely used for barrier coating of plasma display panel (PDP) cells and its resistance against ion sputtering is a critical issue for the prolongation of lifetime of PDPs. The top surface of an MgO barrier coat may be hydrated to form a thin layer of magnesium hydroxide [Mg(OH)2] due to moisture inadvertently contained in the gas of the PDP cell. In this study, sputtering yields of Mg(OH)2 by low-energy noble-gas ion bombardment have been evaluated experimentally with the use of a mass-selected ion beam system and compared with those of MgO. It has been found that the etched depths of Mg(OH)2 and MgO are nearly equal when they are subject to the same noble-gas ion bombardment conditions.

Why are physical sputtering yields similar for incident ions with different masses?—physical sputtering yields of the Lennard–Jones system

“…On the other hand, the sputtering yields by He + ions are lower in most of the energy range. Similar weak mass dependence is also observed for the sputtering yields of composite materials [30,31].…”

“…For example, sputtering yield data for single-element materials by single-element ion impact obtained before the mid-90s are compiled in [21]. The sputtering yields of various materials, including composite materials, by various ionic species were also obtained in more recent experiments for metals [22][23][24][25][26][27], metal-oxides [28][29][30][31][32][33][34], and Si-and C-based materials [20,[35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44] Sputtering can cause damages on the etched material surface, which have also been extensively studied [45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52].…”

Foundations of atomic-level plasma processing in nanoelectronics

“…Other beam studies on Si-and C-based materials were also reported [32,[42][43][44][45][46][47]. In addition [48,49], ion beam studies were used to determine the sputtering yields of metals [50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61] and metal oxides [60][61][62][63][64][65]. Binary-collision-model [66][67][68][69] and molecular dynamics (MD) [70][71][72] simulations were also used to study etching and sputtering phenomena theoretically.…”