Influence of surface roughness on electron emission and sputtering in charged beam-surface interactions

Abstract

A method for calculating polar angular distributions N(Θ) of secondary particles (Auger and background electrons and sputtered atoms) emitted from a surface which exhibits non-repetitive structures is proposed. The different processes affected by the roughness are reviewed. The assumptions concerning the excitation and the transport of the particle inside the target are discussed. The polar angular distributions obtained when the recapture of particles can be neglected are found to depend only on the slope distribution P(J). For a surface with well-defined asperities, we propose a method which is suitable even when shadowing effects must be taken into account.