Effect of bulk binding forces on energetic-ion-induced collision cascades: A combined simulational and analytical approach

Abstract

The effect of bulk binding forces on the recoil density and the particle flux in an ion-induced collision cascade is studied. Firstly, available analytical solutions are verified with the help of Monte Carlo simulations. When using molecular-dynamics simulations with a purely repulsive potential, we show that recoil densities and particle fluxes can be described by the well-known analytical quantities with zero bulk binding energy. When attractive interatomic forces are introduced in the simulation, both distributions can be described by analytical formulae generalized for non-vanishing bulk binding energy. The value of the latter, however, is rather small and is discussed in the paper.