Abstract
Abstract The emission of neutral and positively charged silver clusters during sputtering of a polycrystalline silver target by 5 keV Ar+ ion bombardment has been studied and the sputter ejected silver flux has been characterized. While the sputtered ions Agn+ were measured directly using secondary ion mass spectrometry, appropriate postionization techniques (50 eV electron impacttion; two-photon ionization at λ = 248 nm were applied for the simultaneous measurement of the emitted neutral clusters Agn. By the combination of these techniques, the contribution of Agn+ and Agn in the sputter emitted silver flux is determined quantitatively. As a result, the silver flux is found to be strongly dominated by neutral clusters rather than cluster ions (flux ratio: Ag n + Ag n ≤1% for n = 1–4). The contribution of neutral clusters in the overall silver flux decreases rapidly and monotonically with increasing cluster size n and decreases, in addition, with decreasing bombarding energy (≤5 keV) in agreement with a statistical model for the emission of sputtered neutral metal clusters. The well known alternation of the secondary ion intensities of Agn+ as a function of cluster size (higher intensities for odd n) is found to be correlated with the effective “ionization potentials” of the corresponding sputtered neutral clusters, which were additionally measured.
Published Version
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