Fractal analysis of roughness profile induced by ion bombardment of metal surface

Surface roughness, which plays or could play an important role in microelectronics, surface analysis, medicine and other branches of science and technology, is one of the more important aspects of ion bombardment-induced modification of surface morphology of solids. The results of profilometric and microscopic experiments showed dependence of measured surface roughness parameters upon the length of elementary segment (profilograph) or scanning area (AFM). The “scaling effects” are interesting and may be important in fractal analysis of ion sputtered surface. The paper presents an analysis in question relative to stainless-steel surface roughness profile generated by very oblique broad argon ion beam irradiation. The preliminary results obtained for normal bombardment and presented elsewhere have shown that fractal analysis, surface roughness measurement and surface topography observations may form a proper investigative tool which could give a relatively full picture of surface morphology modification during ion beam bombardment. Here, we tried to verify this conclusion for grazing incidence.