Low erosion behavior of polystyrene films under erbium ion implantation

Abstract

Erbium ion implantation in Polystyrene (PS) thin films has been performed with 40 and 60 keV ions to a dose range between 1 × 10¹⁴ and 1 × 10¹⁶ ions/cm². The X-ray reflectivity technique was applied to determine the ion-induced eroded layer thickness and interestingly, the erosion rate is found to decrease with increasing ion doses exhibiting simple power law behavior of the form ∼(dose)^−b. We propose the formation of a carbonaceous network at the top surface, which seems to prevent further erosion of the polymer with increasing the duration of implantation time. These findings may open up a possibility of loading a large amount of erbium in a polymer matrix by the implantation technique to make it suitable for various optoelectronic applications.