Abstract
Ion bombardment sputtering is widely used in combination with various analytical approaches to determine the elemental composition of thin solid layers as a function of depth. It is generally recognized that the sputter-etching process can seriously influence the nature of experimentally determined composition depth profiles. The characteristics of the sputter-etching process which must be considered in depth profile work include ion-bombardment-induced alteration of the surface composition, ion-bombardment-induced motion of atoms in the near-surface region and ion-bombardment-induced roughening of the sample surface. A discussion of these processes is presented and much of the recent work in this field is summarized.
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