Spatially anisotropic etching of graphite by hyperthermal atomic oxygen.

The spatially anisotropic kinetics involved in the chemical reaction between highly ordered pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) and a beam containing hyperthermal (approximately 8 km s(-1)) O((3)P) atomic oxygen and molecular oxygen yields unique surface morphologies. Upon exposure at moderate sample temperatures (298-423 K), numerous multilayer circular pits embedded in the reacted areas have been observed with the use of atomic force microscopy and scanning tunneling microscopy. These pits have diameters spanning nanometers to micrometers and depths from a few to tens of nanometers. The most striking characteristic of these pits is the convex curvature of the pit bottoms, where the highest point on the pit bottom is at the center and the lowest point occurs around the peripheral edge. Such structure arises by the interplay between kinetics of pit nucleation, the spatially anisotropic kinetics involved in the lateral and downward reactivity of HOPG, and the fluence of atomic oxygen. These kinetics, which are also influenced by the high reactivity of the translationally hot impinging oxygen atoms, govern the overall morphological evolution of the surface.