Nanopores milled in carbon nanomembranes due to impact of individual slow highly charged ions

Abstract

Nanostructures produced by slow highly charged ion (HCI) impact on surfaces have been a hot topic recently (see [1 - 4] and refs. therein). In this contribution we present first investigations on the effect of individual slow HCI bombardment of freestanding carbon nano-membranes (CNMs). The CNMs are produced by cross-linking of an aromatic self-assembled monolayer of biphenyl units with lowenergy electrons [5]. The substrate is then subsequently removed and the resulting nanosheet (1 nm thickness) transferred onto a holey carbon TEM grid. CNMs produced in such a way are irradiated by slow Xeq+ ions of various charge states (20 ! q ! 40) and kinetic energies (4 keV ! E ! 180 keV). After irradiation the CNMs are inspected by high resolution imaging techniques, e.g. TEM, SEM and AFM. On the irradiated CNMs we find nanoscopic pores (3 - 30 nm in diameter, see fig. 1), whose number density corresponds well with the incident ion fluence, indicating that about every HCI produces a nano-hole in the CNM.