Abstract
A high-pressure/fast-atom bombardment ion source has been used for detailed investigations of collisional stabilization of sputtered ions. Specifically, alkali halide cluster ions, which acquire significant internal energies from the sputtering process, are stabilized to a large extent through collisions with a buffer gas, as demonstrated by reduction of “magic number” behavior in the cluster ion abundance distributions and in the unimolecular dissociations of mass-selected species. The extent of collisional stabilization correlates well with the collisional stabilization efficiency of the gas and buffer gas pressure. Reactions between the alkali halide samples and certain buffer gases result in unexpected cluster product ions, for example the observation of only [(CsF) n Cs] + from sputtering CsI in SF 6. The origin of these product ions has been investigated with a set of experiments involving mass spectrometry and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The formation mechanism for these cluster product ions is not clear, but in part it must consist of fast-atom beam-assited reactions between the substrate and buffer gas reactant species in the selvedge.
Published Version
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