Molecular dynamics study of sputtering of Cu (111) under Ar ion bombardment

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Abstract We have used the molecular dynamics (MD) technique using many-body interaction potentials to analyse in detail the processes leading to sputter emission, in order to gain a microscopic understanding of low energy bombardment phenomena. Calculations were performed for a Cu (111) single crystal surface bombarded with Ar atoms in the energy range from 10–1000 eV. The results presented for low bombarding energies are mainly concerned with the near sputtering threshold behaviour, yields and depth of origin of sputtered atoms. Furthermore, it is found, that in addition to sputtered atoms, a large number of ad-atoms at the surface are generated during the evolution of the collision cascade. At higher energies the question of cluster emission and especially their energy distribution and angular distribution are addressed. It was found that the energy distributions for the dimers and monomer atoms exhibit a similar dependence on emission energy as has been observed recently also experimentally. For atoms ...