Anisotropic energies of sputtered atoms under oblique ion incidence

The energy of sputtered atoms that are emitted from ion-bombarded targets is an important factor in thin film technology. In particular, bombardment by obliquely incident ions is of interest for applications since it leads to more efficient sputtering in comparison to normal incidence. In this paper, we investigate the angle-resolved energy distributions of atoms sputtered by obliquely incident ion beams by the means of numerical modeling. We identify major trends that govern the sputtering anisotropies and provide a semi-empirical dependence, which describes the energy distributions and the average energies of atoms emitted under oblique ion impact. This dependence replaces the well-known Thompson formula in cases when anisotropies are important. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.