KEV PARTICLE BOMBARDMENT OF SOLIDS - MOLECULAR-DYNAMICS SIMULATIONS AND BEYOND

The bombardment of solids with keV atoms or ions leads to rather viole nt collisions with subsequent ejection of target particles. This revie w discusses computational aspects of molecular dynamics simulations de signed to describe this process. and presents studies in which the cal culations have played an important role in understanding the details o f the bombardment and ejection processes at the atomic level. The mole cular dynamics simulations in conjunction with comparable experiments allow this process to be used as a measure of surface structure. Recen tly experiments were performed that measured the energy and angular di stributions of particles ejected in two electronic states. We have acc ordingly incorporated a simple electronic excitation/de-excitation mod el into the simulation and shown that collisional events are important to describe the measured distributions.