PARTICLE ENERGY AND ANGLE DISTRIBUTIONS IN ION-BEAM SPUTTERING

We performed investigations on energy distributions of ions and neutra ls generated during argon and krypton ion beam sputtering of titanium and boron nitride using a modified energy selective mass spectrometer. During the process, we measured the secondary particle energy and ang le distribution and estimated a ''differential sputter yield'' which g ives a semi-quantitative, angle-resolved number of sputtered particles per incident ion. Sputtering was performed in the low-energy range be tween 20 eV and 1200 eV at a 90 degrees fixed angle between the sputte ring source and the detector system. In addition, a detector-tilt syst em was developed far angle-resolved measurements. Dependent on the pri mary ion energy, backscattered and resputtered process gas ions with c learly different energy distributions were detected. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science S.A.