Ion beam control of electrical, magnetic, and optical material properties

The key condition for radical progress in technology in the 21th century is the availability of a method for the controlled production in a solid of 3D patterns of desired physical and chemical properties, with the possibility of downsizing pattern elements to the nanometer scale being a crucial requirement. In this paper, a method for changing electrical, magnetic, optical and other key physical properties in a direct and predetermined manner by radically modifying the solid's atomic composition is proposed for the first time. The physical basis of the new technology is the observation - well verified in our numerous experiments - that accelerated particle beams can be used to remove atoms from thin films of di- or multi-atomic compounds. It is shown, in particular, that by selectively removing atoms of a given type dielectrics can be customized into metals or semiconductors, nonmagnetic materials into magnetic ones, and the optical and other properties of materials can be changed radically. The selective removal of atoms of a specified type from a material is of great interest for future technologies, especially for those relevant to nanoelectronics and, more broadly, to the numerous 'nanoproblems' ahead in the third millennium.