Ovipositional decisions in herbivorous insects may be affected by social information from conspecifics. Social facilitation of oviposition has been suggested for the onion fly Delia antiqua. In the current study, we found that D. antiqua oviposition was unequal between paired oviposition stations of equal quality and that more eggs were laid on an oviposition station baited with decoy flies than on the control. The increased oviposition toward the decoys continued over time >8 h. When decoys were placed upside down, the number of eggs laid did not differ between the decoy and control sides of oviposition stations, suggesting that social facilitation of oviposition is mediated by visual cues. Based on these findings, mechanisms of social facilitation of oviposition in D. antiqua were discussed.

Surface smoothing of Ru used as underlayer of magnetic tunneling junctions (MTJ) in magneto-resistive random access memory (MRAM) was carried out with gas cluster ion beam (GCIB) in order to improve device characteristics. For Ru films, surface smoothing with 5 kV N2-GCIB irradiation was effective, and CoFe films deposited on smoothed Ru surface also showed smooth surface. From the hysteresis loop measurements of MTJ formed on smoothed Ru with N2-GCIB, it showed improvement of inter-layer coupling magnetic field (Hin) with decreasing the surface roughness of underlayer Ru. It is expected that surface roughness of MgO in MTJ was also improved by smoothing of underlayer Ru with N2-GCIB.

Organic materials or polymers, which are widely used in electronic devices, are easily damaged by energetic ion or electron bombardment. Therefore, it is difficult to use conventional ion or electron beam processes for etching organic materials. In this study, a gas cluster beam possessing kinetic energy of the order of several hundred eV was used as a novel means to realize high-rate, low-damage etching. Polyethylene (PE) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) were used as the target organic materials. Using a SF6 cluster beam, the etching depth suddenly increased when the nozzle gas pressure exceeded 0.6 MPa, as in the case of cluster beam formation. When the SF6 gas pressure in the nozzle was 1.2 MPa, the etching rates of PVC and PE were 2.88 μm/s and 1.62 μm/s, respectively. The dependence of the etching effect on cluster size was studied by varying the gas temperature. The etching depth of PVC increased with increasing average cluster size and intensity of the beam. The flow rate of the gas was constant; hence, etching of the organic materials did not occur because of the individual impact of the molecular beam. In fact, it occurred because of the neutral cluster, which had a large total kinetic energy. The energy per molecule of the gas cluster beam is of the order of several tens of meV; hence, high-rate, low-damage etching of organic materials can be potentially achieved.

Organic materials have been widely used in various fields of electronic applications. However, they are difficult to process without damage by using a conventional ion beam which use energetic ions. In this study, gas cluster ion beam (GCIB), which shows low-damage process, was used for organic materials, and irradiation effect of size selected GCIB was studied with Xray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). In the case of irradiation of 500 eV Ar ion (monomer ion) on polyimide, the intensities of both N-C=O and C-O bond decreased after irradiation. On the other hand, there was small change in the XPS spectra after 15 keV Ar-GCIB irradiation with the same ion dose. The etching rate of polyimide per one ion with 15 keV Ar-GCIB was almost 1.8×104 times higher than that with 500 eV Ar monomer ions. The damages in polyimide decreased with increasing the Ar cluster size owing to the reduction of energy per atom at acceleration voltage of 15 kV. After irradiation of size selected 5 kV Ar cluster ion, damage was almost negligible. Although, the surface became rough after irradiation of Ar-GCIB, surface roughness and the change of chemical bond were very small with N2-GCIB irradiation. Ar-GCIB irradiation on dye-sensitized solar cells (N719) showed that very low-damage process is possible with GCIB, and it indicated that GCIB is suitable for surface processing of organic materials used in electronic devices.

Surface modification effects on patterned surface with gas cluster ion beam (GCIB) were studied by observation with a cross-sectional transmission electron microscope in order to use it for planarization of patterned media such as discrete track media (DTM) or bit-patterned media (BPM) for future hard disk drives. As a model structure of patterned media, line-and-space or bit patterns were fabricated on Si substrates, and subsequently amorphous carbon films were deposited on them. After Ar-GCIB irradiations on amorphous carbon, it was shown that GCIB preferentially removed bumps or crest on the surface of amorphous carbon at normal incidence. The required thickness for planarization was close to the initial peak-to-valley. At an incident angle of 57°, line-and-space patterns became sharp-pointed shape. On the contrary, line-and-space patterns were planarized without tiny asperity formation at 77°. These results indicate that quite effective planarization of patterned surface is possible using GCIB at normal or glancing angle irradiation.

This paper reviews gas cluster ion beam (GCIB) technology, including the generation of cluster beams, fundamental characteristics of cluster ion to solid surface interactions, emerging industrial applications, and identification of some of the significant events which occurred as the technology has evolved into what it is today. More than 20 years have passed since the author (I.Y) first began to explore feasibility of processing by gas cluster ion beams at the Ion Beam Engineering Experimental Laboratory of Kyoto University. Processes employing ions of gaseous material clusters comprised of a few hundred to many thousand atoms are now being developed into a new field of ion beam technology. Cluster-surface collisions produce important non-linear effects which are being applied to shallow junction formation, to etching and smoothing of semiconductors, metals, and dielectrics, to assisted formation of thin films with nano-scale accuracy, and to other surface modification applications.

Nano structure formations on Au surfaces by 20 keV Ar gas cluster ion beam (GCIB) irradiation at an oblique incidence were studied. When the incident angle was close to 0° from the surface normal of Au targets, the Au surface was smoothed due to the lateral sputtering effects and there were no structure formations on the surfaces. However, ripples were formed on Au surfaces at incident angle of 60° without sample rotation. When the Au samples were irradiated with Ar-GCIB at 60° with sample rotation, cone like structures with 50nm in diameters were fabricated and the surface roughness had a maximum value. However, the surface roughness suddenly decreased over incident angle of 60°. Even though the surface roughness was the same in the cases with and without sample rotations at 85° incidence, ripple structures were formed parallel to the incoming GCIB directions when there was no rotation. The incident angle dependence of the sputtering depth decreased following cosθ dependence. Very efficient surface smoothing without removing materials were realized with oblique incidence.

A size-selected gas cluster ion beam (GCIB) system has been developed to study the size effects of energetic large cluster ion bombardments on a solid surface for the first time. This system equipped a permanent magnet with a magnetic flux density of 1.2 T. There is a sliding detector and sample holder on a guiding rail perpendicular to the incoming cluster beam axis. By locating a sample at a certain position, particular size of cluster ion can be irradiated continuously with affordable ion current density. When the total acceleration energy of Ar-GCIB was 5keV, both amorphous and oxide thickness on Si substrate increased with decreasing cluster size. This result showed good agreement with that obtained from molecular dynamics simulations.

Gas cluster ion beam (GCIB) techniques have recently been proposed as new processing methods. We have been investigating the characteristics of GCIB techniques through sputtering GaAs and GaP by Ar gas cluster ion beams as a function of cluster size and acceleration energy. The Ar cluster size was selected by a magnetic spectrometer, and was obtained from the mass spectra measured by a time of flight mass spectrometer. The average sputtering yields of GaAs and GaP were 0–47 and 0–66 atoms/ion for 5–30 k V, respectively. The sputtering yields of GaAs and GaP were higher than those of an Ar monomer ion.

Ta2O5 films were deposited on a rough surface (average roughness 1.3nm, peak-to-valley 14nm) and surface roughness evolutions and improvements by O2 gas cluster ion beam (O2-GCIB) assisted deposition was studied. The average roughness dramatically decreased from 1.3nm to 0.5nm after deposition of Ta2O5 films 20nm in thickness with 7 keV of O2 cluster ion beams. As there was no etching or sputtering of Ta2O5 film by 7keV O2-GCIB irradiations, O2-GCIB assist deposition realized significant improvement of surface roughness by additional deposition of Ta2O5 film whose thickness was close to the peak-to-valley of original surface. It is expected that morphological evolution of the film by GCIB assist deposition becomes completely different from conventional ion assist deposition due to energetic cluster ion impacts.

Defect formation in Si by B10H14 (decaborane) ion implantation has been investigated with photoluminescence measurement. An intense W-line was observed at photon energy of 1.018eV from as-implanted FZ-Si by 30keV B10H14+ implantation. W-line center is considered as an interstitial aggregate and usually observed after ion implantation with subsequent low-temperatureannealing in the case of atomic ion implantation. As W-line is observed from as-implanted Si, the defect formation with B10H14 is expected to be different from that of B+ implantation with the same energy per atom. The energy dependence of W-line intensity is similar to that of diffusivity enhancement after rapid thermal annealing. Molecular dynamics simulation and Rutherford backscattering spectrometry channeling experiment suggest that one B10H14 implantation creates a larger number of dislocated Si atoms than that of B+ implantation with the same energy per atom. This characteristic of B10H14 implantation may cause the different defect reactions in subsequent annealing process.

High-quality Ta2O5/SiO2 were deposited with oxygen gas cluster ion assisted deposition at low-temperature for advanced optical filters. With gas cluster ion assisted deposition, high refractive index and very smooth surface of Ta2O5 films were realized. The optimum cluster ion energy and cluster ion current density for Ta2O5 films were found to be 7keV and 0.5μA/cm2, respectively. The structure of film was very uniform and no porous or columnar structures were observed. The surface or interfaces of Ta2O5/SiO2 films were also very flat by surface smoothing effect of cluster ion beams. Very smooth surface can be realized even though the bottom surface was rough. There was no significant wavelength shift after an environmental test, which indicates that dense oxide films were formed at low-temperature with O2 cluster ion assisted deposition.

Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) with Gas Cluster Ion Beams (GCIB) was studied with experiments and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to achieve a high-resolution depth profiling. For this purpose, it is important to prevent both ion-mixing and the surface roughening due to energetic ions. As the Ar cluster ion beam shows surface smoothing effects and high secondary-ion yield in the low-energy regime, the cluster ion beam would be suitable for the primary ion beam of SIMS. From MD simulations of Ar cluster ion impact on a Si substrate, the ion-mixing is heavier than for Ar monomer ions at the same energy per atom, because the energy density at the impact point by clusters is extremely high. However, the sputtering yields with Ar cluster ions are one or two orders of magnitude higher than that with Ar monomer ions at the same energy per atom. Comparing at the ion energy where the ion-mixing depths are the same by both cluster and monomer ion impacts, cluster ions show almost ten times higher sputtering yield than Ar monomer ions. Preliminary experiment was done with a conventional SIMS detector and a mass resolution of several nm was achieved with Ar cluster ions as a primary ion beam.