| Ion implantation is known to result in a significant amount of damage in solid single crystals. In this work a battery of material probes is used to study the effect of a very high-dose He implantation in ferroelectric lithium niobate (LiNbO3) and the implantation-induced formation of defects. In addition, the evolution of these defects with post-implantation annealing is examined.;After irradiation, a high concentration of defects is found to collect and create a network of thick prismatic planar defects having typical dimensions of ∼1.5 microm and 200 nm parallel and perpendicular to the Z axis, respectively. Optical microscopy shows that there is strong temperature dependence for forming the network; the density of these defects reaches a maximum value for an annealing temperature of 250 °C. However, annealing to temperatures above 380 °C fully eliminates the defects. High-resolution TEM studies indicate that the defects are likely localized twinning and dislocation pileups due to plastic deformation of the lattice to relieve He-implantation-induced stress. During this deformation He accumulates at the twin boundaries.;A second type of implantation induced defects is studied using room temperature, high- resolution electron microscopy; this study shows that implanted He in LiNbO3 nucleates and accumulates as bubbles. These He inclusions are at ∼20 GPa pressure and most probably in the solid phase. In addition, the energetically favored shape of the inclusions in their as-implanted form is spherical and not oblate; this spherical shape is due to the fact their diameter is below a critical radius for balancing the surface and elastics energies as predicted by elastic theory. When annealed, the characteristic length scale of the He inclusions increases, forming faceted bubbles. Annealing also causes the He inclusions to migrate and accumulate into strings due to the preferred {1¯01¯4}-pyramidal-twinning planes.;The ion implantation-induced defects are found to be useful for several microfabrication techniques, in particular we describe the use of these defects for ion slicing of single crystal thin films from bulk crystals and ferroelectric domain patterning by low voltage pulses applied to a scanning force microscope tip.;The origin of the rate of anomalously high spatially selective etching of a buried heavily implanted region in complex oxides is found to be closely related to the implantation-induced defects. He+-ion implantation in single-crystal LiNbO3 samples followed by low-temperature anneal and wet etched results in an etch-rate enhancement of 104. This high rate selective etch is crucial for the Crystal Ion Slicing process, a novel technique to fabricate single crystal thin films by slicing them off a bulk crystal. Experiments, using time-resolved optical microscopy and proximal-probe microscopy, show that this enhancement arises from the more rapid etch-solution transport in the thick prismatic planar defect network formed in the implanted region after annealing.;Ferroelectric domain patterns are generated in He-implanted single-crystal bulk wafers of LiNbO3 by means of low-voltage pulses applied to a scanning force microscope tip and investigated using piezoresponse force microscopy and selective etching. It is shown that high fluence implantation results in isolation of the near surface region, creating a free-standing-film-like behavior for the layer above the heavily implanted region. At low fluence the implantation damage allows low voltage poling, apparently by vacancy-induced dipole formation. In addition, electrostatic repulsion of the poling-induced buried charges from adjacent domains limits the domain size and depth; this effect results in a uniform domain structures and potentially enables large area nanodomains patterns to be written. |
