Abstract
We propose several simple models to study the physical origin and respective importance in surface analysis of different mechanisms of enhanced atomic mobility in sputtered samples, and their influence on the depth resolution of the analysis. We study successively the effects of point defects created by the irradiation, collision cascades (effects of atomic displacements and also thermal spikes) and knock-on. The enhanced diffusion due to point defects is shown to be dominant in low melting point elements where vacancies are mobile. In other systems where vacancies are not mobile during analysis the effect of knock-on by primary ions is shown to be the most important.
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