GIANT METAL SPUTTERING YIELDS INDUCED BY 20-5000 KEV ATOM GOLD CLUSTERS

Very large nonlinear effects have been found in Au-1 to Au-5 cluster-i nduced metal sputtering yield measurements over a broad projectile ene rgy interval from 20 keV/atom to 5 MeV/atom. The sputtering yield maxi ma were found at the same total energy but not at the same energy/atom as expected. For Au-5 a yield as high as 3000 was reached at 150 keV/ atom while the Au-1 yield was only 55 at the same velocity.