Thermal spikes and sputtering yields

Abstract

Recent experiments on the erosion of condensed gases and alkali halides by incident ions have renewed interest in the description of thermal spikes. In such spikes a localized, transiently heated region produced by incident radiation may induce activated processes like evaporation of atoms or molecules from a surface. In this paper are presented useful expressions to describe the thermal sputtering for materials having a temperature dependent thermal diffusivity, using a heat capacity and thermal conductivity which vary as C = C ₀ T ^n–1 and K = K ₀ ^m–1, respectively, and assigning a width to the initial temperature distribution.