Direct surface relief formation by e-beam in amorphous chalcogenide layers C. Cserha ´ti 1 • I. Csarnovics 2 • L. Harasztosi 1 • M. L. Trunov 3,4 • S. Ko ¨ke ´nyesi 2 Received: 4 August 2016 / Accepted: 11 November 2016 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016 Abstract Patterning processes in amorphous Se and As 20 Se 80 films at short electron beam pulses (from 200 ns to 100 ms) were studied for the first time. The surface reliefs occurring as after-pulses effects were recorded and analysed. Giant hillock formation was detected at about 200 ls pulses while very small changes in surface mor- phology were observed at other pulse durations. The obtained data indicate that the strong increase in e-beam sensitivity of mechanical response (giant surface hillock formation) at about 200 ls is due to some resonance effect. A qualitative description is given, relating these times to the characteristic generation and relaxation time of the defects in these materials, which illuminates the process of e-beam induced structural rearrangement. The measure- ment has been performed at room temperature and at 120  C and only a 20% change in the maximal pattern height has been detected. 1 Introduction Over the years, research on chalcogenide glasses (ChGs) has grown enormously due to the strong interest in these materials both from scientific as well as technological point of view [1, 2]. Applications of ChGs have mainly been based on their transparency to infra-red light and their sensitivity to different kinds of irradiation. The latter pro- duce pronounced structural changes among which photo expansion, or light-induced relief formation is one of the most interesting from scientific point of view regarding the challenges of understanding their microscopic nature. Electron beam (e-beam)-induced surface patterning of ChGs has attracted considerably less attention. There are limited number of thorough experimental studies, devoted to direct relief formation by e-beam exposure, have been performed recently [3–9]. Tanaka [3] detected first surface deformations such as convex relief lines with micrometer scales, in bulk and thin films of As 2 S 3 under a line-scanned e-beam. He also observed that deformation can be produced only by scan- ned or pulsed e-beam. His explanation of the process was discussed and refined by different research groups [4, 5, 7–9]. There is however one point, which was not exposed in the past years: the pulsed nature of the e-beam. In this work we studied how the frequency of the elec- tron pulses influences the shape of the formed structures. 2 Experimental Amorphous As 20 Se 80 as well as Se films of 2 lm thick and 2 cm in diameter were prepared by thermal evaporation on microscope glass slides covered by a conductive layer of & C. Cserha ´ti cserhati.csaba@science.unideb.hu 1 Department of Solid State Physics, University of Debrecen, P. O. Box 2, Debrecen 4010, Hungary 2 Department of Experimental Physics, University of Debrecen, P. O. Box 105, 4010 Debrecen, Hungary 3 Uzhgorod National University, Narodna Sq. 3, Uzhgorod 88000, Ukraine 4 Uzhgorod Scientific-Technological Center of IIR NAS Ukraine, Zamkovi shody st. 4a, 88000 Uzhgorod, Ukraine 123 J Mater Sci: Mater Electron DOI 10.1007/s10854-016-6076-y