Introduction

When a beam of energetic particles enters a solid, several processes are initiated in the area of interaction. A fraction of the particles are backscattered from the surface layers, whilst the others are slowed down in the solid. The collision induces secondary processes such as recoil and sputtering of constituent atoms, defect formation, electron excitation and emission, and photon emission. Thermal and radiation-induced diffusion contributes to various phenomena of mixing of constituent elements, phase transformation, amorphization, crystallization, track formation, permanent damage, and so on. Ion implantation and sputtering changes the surface morphology; craters, facets, grooves, ridges, and pyramids and/or blistering, exfoliation, and a spongy surface may develop. All those processes are interrelated in a complicated way and several processes have to be included for the understanding of individual phenomena. Therefore, it is necessary to quantitatively understand the experimental observations and to have stringent design abilities for sophisticated applications of these versatile processes in the field of nanotechnology aiming at material modification, deposition, implantation, erosion, nano-fabrication, surface analysis, and so on.

This chapter is composed of basic processes and outline of theoretical models, ion implantation and defect formation, sputtering, and surface morphology. It is focused on the recent experimental findings in the field of interaction of ions with matter and theoretical models including various simulation codes explaining the complicated experimental phenomena.

Basic processes and outline of theoretical models

General remarks

An energetic ion incident on a solid sequentially collides with constituent atoms.