Particle energy and angle distributions in ion beam sputtering

Abstract

Abstract We performed investigations on energy distributions of ions and neutrals generated during argon and krypton ion beam sputtering of titanium and boron nitride using a modified energy selective mass spectrometer. During the process, we measured the secondary particle energy and angle distribution and estimated a “differential sputter yield” which gives a semi-quantitative, angle-resolved number of sputtered particles per incident ion. Sputtering was performed in the low-energy range between 20 eV and 1200 eV at a 90° fixed angle between the sputtering source and the detector system. In addition, a detector–tilt system was developed for angle-resolved measurements. Dependent on the primary ion energy, backscattered and resputtered process gas ions with clearly different energy distributions were detected.