Recollections of fifty years with sputtering

Abstract

The paper is an attempt to trace milestones in the understanding of sputtering by ion bombardment. The field developed rapidly between 1955 and the end of the 1980s, but several important aspects are still under active investigation today. The focus here is on the evolution of the present understanding of the process of sputter emission. The presentation is based primarily on physical arguments, supported by results from theory referred to in the text. Many research groups have contributed to this field. Doing justice to them all appears close to impossible within the given frame.

In situ measurements of plasma properties during gas-condensation of Cu nanoparticles

“…Atoms that are sputtered from the surface typically leave with about 1-10 eV of energy. 43,44 These atoms are cooled by the inert gas at a rate of 1 MeV/s until their temperatures fall below the evaporation/condensation threshold, and they then begin to condense into clusters. As they pass by the Langmuir probe, we can measure their temperatures, and we found them to be a few hundred Kelvin above the temperature of the buffer gas.…”

Simulation of ion beam sputtering with SDTrimSP, TRIDYN and SRIM

“…The erosion of atoms from a solid surface by bombardment of energetic particles is known as sputtering and has been subject of intense research for more than 50 years [1,2].…”

“…Theoretical models of sputtering were able to describe the main features of the sputter process, such as the sputter yield (removed number of atoms from a surface per incident ion), the correlation of the sputtering yield with the nuclear energy loss, the dependence of the sputtering yield on projectile incidence angle, projectile species and projectile and target mass and the overall angular emission distribution of sputtered atoms [1,2,10].…”

Physical Mechanisms of SiO$_{2}$ Target Sputtering with Accelerated Ions of C$_{60}$

“…в [21]. Переход от механизма, связанного с термическим испарением из теплового пика [19,22] к взрывному, может обуславливать ска-чок коэффициента распыления. Очевидно, подобный механизм должен реализоваться при превышении некой пороговой энергии бомбардирующих ионов, величина которой зависит от теплофизи-ческих характеристик вещества.…”