Interaction of slow multicharged ions with solid surfaces

Electronic sputtering of solids by slow, highly charged ions: Fundamentals and applications

“…Defect mediated sputtering by SHCI up to Xe 27+ has been demonstrated for LiF and SiO 2 [11,12]. Sputtering by Coulomb explosions [1,3,10] was found to be consistent with results for uranium oxide and SHCI like Xe 44+ and Th 70+ [13]. A third model considers effects of high densities of electronic excitation on the structural stability of solids.…”

“…Continuous development of ion source technology in recent years has made beams of slow (v<v 0 =2.19 106 m/s), highly charged ions (SHCI) available for ion-solid interaction studies [1][2][3]. It is the defining characteristic of SHCI that their charge state, q, is much larger than the mean equilibrium charge state which ions develop when traveling in solids with comparable velocities.…”

“…Except for grazing incident collisions, only a small fraction of the potential energy can be dissipated before ions reach the surface, because the available time is too short for relaxation through Auger and radiative transitions. Hollow atom formation and decay in and above metallic and insulating targets has been investigated in great detail by measurements of secondary electron emission, Auger electron and x-ray spectroscopy [1][2][3]. Atomic force microscopy has been applied to the characterization of nanometer size defects on mica surfaces [2,7] and on self assembled monolayers [3,8] formed by the impact of individual SHCI.…”

Novel method for unambiguous ion identification in mixed ion beams extracted from an electron beam ion trap

“…the sum of all ionization potentials) rather then it's kinetic energy (giving rise to the so-called kinetic emission -KE) dominates the total electron emission process [15,16]. PE from metal surfaces has been found to strongly increase with the ion potential energy and hence it's charge state [5,16].…”

Possible diamond-like nanoscale structures induced by slow highly-charged ions on graphite (HOPG)

“…One of the unique features that characterises slow highly-charged ions is their immense potential energy (the sum of the ionization potentials) and slow kinetic energy (velocities are lower than the Bohr velocity, v Bohr = 2.19x10 6 ms -1 ) in contrast to singly-charged fast ions commonly used in implantation and ion/solid=interactions in general. Such attributes are mainly due to the deposition of large amounts of potential energy on the surface of the solid within a 10 fs time scale, the intense electronic excitation with equivalent power densities of the order of ~10 14 W/cm 2,3,4 , the highly spatial localisation of the excitation and the formation of nano-defects on the surface of the target material.…”