# Ion beam sputtering of silicon: Energy distributions of sputtered and scattered ions

## TL;DR

This study investigates the energy distributions of sputtered and scattered ions during silicon ion beam sputtering, analyzing effects of ion energy, species, and angles, and comparing experimental results with models and simulations.

## Contribution

It provides detailed experimental data and analysis of ion energy distributions, including the influence of ion species, angles, and target composition, with comparisons to models and simulations.

## Key findings

- Energy distributions depend on ion energy and scattering angles.
- Higher incident ion energy increases high-energy sputtered ions.
- Target composition variations cause small but detectable differences.

## Abstract

The properties of sputtered and scattered ions are studied for ion beam sputtering of Si by bombardment with noble gas ions. The energy distributions in dependence on ion beam parameters (ion energy: 0.5 - 1 keV; ion species: Ne, Ar, Xe) and geometrical parameters (ion incidence angle, polar emission angle, scattering angle) are measured by means of energy-selective mass spectrometry. The presence of anisotropic effects due to direct sputtering and scattering is discussed and correlated with process parameters. The experimental results are compared to calculations based on a simple elastic binary collision model and to simulations using the Monte-Carlo code SDTrimSP. The influence of the contribution of implanted primary ions on energy distributions of sputtered and scattered particles is studied in simulations. It is found that a 10\% variation of the target composition leads to detectable but small differences in the energy distributions of scattered ions. Comparison with previously reported data for other ion/target configurations confirms the presence of similar trends and anisotropic effects: the number of high-energy sputtered ions increases with increasing energy of incident ions and decreasing scattering angle. The effect of the ion/target mass ratio is additionally investigated. Small differences are observed with the change of the primary ion species: the closer the mass ratio to unity, the higher the average energy of sputtered ions. The presence of peaks, assigned to different mechanisms of direct scattering, strongly depends on the ion/target mass ratio.