SHIPS: A new setup for the investigation of swift heavy ion induced particle emission and surface modifications

TL;DR

This paper introduces a versatile new experimental setup at GSI Darmstadt for studying swift heavy ion effects on various materials, combining irradiation with advanced surface analysis techniques under ultra-high vacuum conditions.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel integrated setup that allows in-situ irradiation and multi-technique surface characterization of materials exposed to high-energy ions.

Findings

First data demonstrating the setup’s capabilities

Development of a new mass spectrometry measurement protocol

Observation of surface modifications and particle emission

Abstract

The irradiation with fast ions with kinetic energies of > 10 MeV leads to the deposition of a high amount of energy along their trajectory (up to several ten keV/nm). The energy is mainly transferred to the electronic subsystem and induces different secondary processes of excitations which result in significant material modifications. A new setup to study these ion induced effects on surfaces will be described in this paper. The setup combines a variable irradiation chamber with different techniques of surface characterizations like scanning probe microscopy, time-of-flight secondary ion and neutral mass spectrometry, as well as low energy electron diffraction under ultra high vacuum conditions, and is mounted at a beamline of the universal linear accelerator (UNILAC) of the GSI facility in Darmstadt, Germany. Here, samples can be irradiated with high-energy ions with a total kinetic energy up to several GeVs under different angles of incidence. Our setup enables the preparation and in-situ analysis of different types of sample systems ranging from metals to insulators. Time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry enables us to study the chemical composition of the surface, while scanning probe microscopy allows a detailed view into the local electrical and morphological conditions of the sample surface down to atomic scales. With the new setup particle emission during irradiation as well as persistent modifications of the surface after irradiation can thus be studied. We present first data obtained with the new setup, including a novel measuring protocol for time-of-flight mass spectrometry with the GSI UNILAC accelerator.