Highly charged ion (HCI) modified tunnel junctions

The neutralization energy carried by highly charged ions (HCIs) provides an alternative method for localizing energy on a target’s surface, producing features and modifying surfaces with fluences and kinetic energy damage that are negligible compared to singly ionized atoms. Since each HCI can deposit an enormous amount of energy into a small volume of the surface (e.g., Xe delivers 51 keV of neutralization energy per HCI), each individual HCI’s interaction with the target can produce a nanoscale feature. Many studies of HCI-surface features have characterized some basic principles of this unique ion-surface interaction, but the activity reported here has been focused on studying ensembles of HCI features in ultra-thin insulating films by fabricating multi-layer tunnel junction devices. The ultra-thin insulating barriers allow current to flow by tunneling, providing a very sensitive means of detecting changes in the barrier due to highly charged ion irradiation and, conversely, HCI modification provides a method of finely tuning the transparency of the tunnel junctions that spans several orders of magnitude for devices produced from a single process recipe. Systematic variation of junction bias, temperature, magnetic field and other parameters provides determination of the transport mechanism, defect densities, and magnetic properties of these nano-features and this novel approach to device