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Publications in Scientific Journals:

F. Aumayr:
"Potential sputtering";
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London A, 362 (2004), 77 - 102.



English abstract:
The potential energy stored in multiply charged ions is liberated when the ions
recombine during impact on a solid surface. For certain target species this can lead
to a novel form of ion-induced sputtering, which, in analogy to the usual kinetic
sputtering, has been termed `potential sputtering’. This sputtering process is characterized
by a strong dependence of the observed sputtering yields on the charge
state of the impinging ion and can take place at ion-impact energies well below the
kinetic sputtering threshold.
We summarize a series of recent careful experiments in which potential sputtering
has been investigated for hyperthermal highly charged ions’ impact on various
surfaces (e.g. Au, LiF, NaCl, SiO2, Al2O3 and MgO), present the di.erent models
proposed to explain the potential sputtering phenomenon and also discuss possible
applications of potential sputtering for nanostructure fabrication.
Keywords: multi-charged-ion-surface interaction;
potential sputtering; hollow atoms; nanostructuring

Created from the Publication Database of the Vienna University of Technology.