Unexpectedly high sputtering yield of carbon at grazing angle of incidence ion bombardment

Abstract

The relative sputtering yield of amorphous carbon with respect to polycrystalline nickel at Ar-ion bombardment was determined by means of Auger electron spectroscopy depth profiling as a function of the angle of incidence and projectile energy in the ranges of 49°–88° and 0.3–1keV, respectively. It was found that the relative sputtering yield YC∕YNi strongly increases with angle of incidence from 49° to 82°. At around 80° the sputtering yield of C is higher than that of Ni. Above 82° no dependence on the angle of incidence was found. The relative sputtering yield weakly depends on the energy of the projectile. The experimental results will be explained by the help of transport of ion in solid (TRIM) simulations.

Sputtering and crystalline structure modification of bismuth thin films deposited onto silicon substrates under the impact of 20–160keV Ar+ ions

“…Therefore, reliable sputtering yield data for bismuth are needed both for enriching the sputtering yield data basis and testing theoretical model predictions. The measured sputtering yields can be interpreted in the framework of Sigmund's transport theory [12] and related semi-empirical models [13][14][15][16][17][18][19] or via computer code simulations [20][21][22] often requiring to introduce the composition and specific parameters of the target material as input data [17,23,24].…”

White light interferometry for quantitative surface characterization in ion sputtering experiments

“…For example, it can be challenging to determine shapes of ion beam profiles and the corresponding operational current densities, especially when the projectile energy goes below 1 keV and then further approaches the sputtering threshold. Moreover, under such conditions, the focusing of the ion beam is in question, and the relative spread ∆ε/ε in the initial kinetic energy distribution of ions [2] can have strong influence on experimental results [3,4].…”

Anomalous atomic transport in driven systems: Ion-sputtering induced enhanced intermixing and cratering in Pt/Ti

“…Say, the typical flux we are using in our experimental setup [45] is around U % 1 lA/cm 2 which corresponds roughly to $10 21 ion/s cm 2 . This flux of ions is distributed in the simulations in a 20 Â 20 Å 2 area, hence the local flux is U l = 10 21 ion/s cm 2 Â 10 16 /400 = 4 Â 10 7 ion/s in the 400 Å 2 area.…”