Nanostructuring of the submonolayer carbon coatings deposited onto the surface of silicon single crystals in a low-pressure microwave discharge plasma

The surface nanostructuring of the submonolayer carbon coatings deposited onto (111) and (100) silicon wafers in a highly ionized ultrahigh-frequency low-pressure plasma is studied. The effect of the coating thickness and the main processing parameters on the mechanisms of morphological changes is studied with allowance for the reconstruction of a single-crystal silicon surface and the mechanical stresses that appear during the preparation of an atomically clean surface during plasma-chemical etching, heterogeneous condensation, and high-temperature annealing. Integral columnar nanosystems with a density of (4-5) x 10(9) cm(-2) and a height of 400 nm are formed on (100) silicon single crystals using nanostructured carbon aggregates as mask coatings and highly anisotropic plasma-chemical etching.