SPUTTERING OF NITI ALLOYS - A COMPARISON OF EXPERIMENT AND SIMULATION

Polycrystalline alloys have been sputtered using a 4 keV Ar+ ion beam. The experiment has been modelled using different computer simulation techniques-static and dynamic Monte Carlo simulation, and a binary collision lattice code. A comparison between the results of the experiment and the simulations and among the different computer programs has been made. These are also compared with the predictions of the linear cascade theory. The relative importance of the surface binding energy, of the depth of origin and of the modified steady-state surface composition on the observed angular dependence of the deposit composition are assessed.