Measurement of local temperature around the impact points of fast ions under grazing incidence

Abstract

Gold and platinum nanoparticles of few-nm size were deposited on amorphous silicon nitride (a-SiN) films. These samples were irradiated with 380 MeV Au ions at grazing incident angles (θi = 2°–5°) to a fluence of ∼1 × 1010 ions/cm2. The irradiated samples were observed using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Ion tracks were clearly observed as long bright lines. Nanoparticles were found to be desorbed from long and narrow regions along the ion tracks. The surface temperature at the thermal spike produced by the ion impact was evaluated from the observed nanoparticle desorption. The observed temperature distribution is qualitatively explained by a one-dimensional two temperature model (1D-TTM) although there are some discrepancies which may be attributed to the surface effects which are not taken into account in 1D-TTM.