Silicon irradiated with an ultrashort 800 nm-laser pulse is studied theoretically using a two temperature description that considers the transient free carrier density during and after irradiation. A Drude model is implemented to account for the highly transient optical parameters. We analyze the importance of considering these density-dependent parameters as well as the choice of the Drude collision frequency. In addition, degeneracy and transport effects are investigated. The importance of each of these processes for resulting calculated damage thresholds is studied. We report damage thresholds calculations that are in very good agreement with experimental results over a wide range of pulse durations.

We show that graphene on a dielectric substrate sustains major modifications if irradiated with swift heavy ions under oblique angles. Due to a combination of defect creation in the graphene layer and hillock creation in the substrate, graphene is split and folded along the ion track yielding double layer nanoribbons. The folded parts are up to several 100 nm in length. Our results indicate that the radiation hardness of graphene devices is questionable but also open up a new way of introducing extended low-dimensional defects in a controlled way.

The irradiation of SrTiO 3 single crystals with swift heavy ions leads to modifications of the surface. The details of the morphology of these modifications depends strongly on the angle of incidence and can be characterized by atomic force microscopy. At glancing angles, discontinuous chains of nanosized hillocks appear on the surface. The latent track radius can be determined from the variation of the length of the chains with the angle of incidence. This radius is material specific and allows the calculation of the electron-phonon-coupling constant for SrTiO 3 . We show that a theoretical description of the nanodot creation is possible within a twotemperature model if the spatial electron density is taken into account. The appearance of discontinuous features can be explained easily within this model, but it turns out that the electronic excitation dissipates on a femtosecond time scale and thus too rapidly to feed sufficient energy into the phonon system in order to induce a thermal melting process. We demonstrate that this can be solved if the temperature dependent diffusion coefficient is introduced into the model.

Ion tracks formed in amorphous Ge by swift heavy-ion irradiation have been identified with experiment and modeling to yield unambiguous evidence of tracks in an amorphous semiconductor. Their underdense core and overdense shell result from quenched-in radially outward material flow. Following a solid-toliquid phase transformation, the volume contraction necessary to accommodate the high-density molten phase produces voids, potentially the precursors to porosity, along the ion direction. Their bow-tie shape, reproduced by simulation, results from radially inward resolidification. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.245502 PACS numbers: 61.80.Jh, 61.43.Dq, 61.43.Bn, 61.05.cf Swift heavy-ion irradiation (SHII) has many applications, spanning geochronological dating [1] to nanostructure fabrication [2]. Though this approach has found industrial application [3], the fundamental nature of ionsolid interactions at very high ion energies remains poorly understood. Such interactions are dominated by inelastic processes (electronic stopping) resulting in the excitation and ionization of substrate atoms while, in contrast, the elastic processes (nuclear stopping) that lead to ballistic atomic displacements at much lower energies are negligible in the SHII regime. The efficiency with which energy deposited in the electronic subsystem is subsequently transferred to the lattice is governed by the electronphonon coupling parameter g where typically g amorphous > g crystalline due to a reduced electron mean free path in the former. When the lattice temperature exceeds that required for melting, a narrow cylinder of molten material is formed along the ion path. The ensuing rapid resolidification of this transient liquid phase can yield remnant structural modifications within the substrate in the form of an ion track.Crystalline Ge (c-Ge) is relatively insensitive to SHII such that ion-track production necessitates very high electronic stopping S e values. Discontinuous tracks follow single-ion irradiation (S e ¼ 35 keV=nm) [4,5] while cluster-ion irradiation (S e ¼ 37-51 keV=nm) yields tracks of diameter 5-15 nm [5]. In contrast, amorphous Ge (a-Ge) is rendered porous under SHII with S e > $10 keV=nm [6] while ion hammering results for S e > $12 keV=nm [6], the latter manifested as a nonzero deformation yield [7]. These observations are consistent with g amorphous > g crystalline and ion-track formation has been suggested as the origin of these two phenomena [6,7]. A recent molecular dynamics (MD) study of irradiated a-Ge [8] suggested voids originate from outgoing shock waves resulting from rapid heating and expansion of the ion-track core. The sole report of ion tracks in a-Ge is that of Furuno et al. [9] who reported recrystallization of tracks in a 5-nm a-Ge layer following SHII in a grazing-incidence orientation, a geometry that can lead to significant reductions in threshold S e values for ion-track formation [10]. The proximity of the surface could also perturb resolidification and enable recrystallization given the molten i...