Sputtering of hollow atoms from carbon surfaces - art. no. 042901

We investigated the emission of K Auger electrons from collisions of hydrog enlike ions C5+, N6+, and O7+ with graphite as well as fullerene covered go ld surfaces. Besides the quite well understood Anger electrons emitted from the projectile, an extremely high yield of Anger electrons originating fro m surface atoms is observed. Remarkably the target Auger spectra show discr ete (atomic) KLL lines superimposed on the broad KW spectra originating fro m bulk carbon. This indicates high-sputtering yields of highly excited carb on ions/atoms with K-shell vacancies.