A comprehensive treatment of the implantation-induced disordering of CuPtB-ordered material was presented with regard to microstructuring. Ion implantation reduced the thermal stability of the crystal, so that disordering occurred at temperatures which were lower than the 800C at which the ordered phase was normally stable. It was shown that implantation-induced disordering was mediated by implantation defects, and could be described quantitatively by using a model which was based upon defect annealing. An activation energy of 2.15eV was evaluated from the temperature dependence of the disordering process. This was assumed to reflect the migration enthalpy of group-III vacancies. Lateral order/disorder structures were obtained via implantation, using high-resolution electron beam lithography, to define wire and dot masks which were down to 35nm in width. These structures were examined by using photoluminescence and transmission electron microscopy. Both methods showed that the spatial resolution was determined by implantation straggling, whereas defect diffusion could be neglected. This was also confirmed by deducing the defect diffusion length from the disordering model.

M.Burkard, A.Englert, C.Geng, A.Mühe, F.Scholz, H.Schweizer, F.Phillipp: Journal of Applied Physics, 1997, 82[3], 1042-52