Creation of surface damage on a nickel (110) surface by bombardment with 3-30 keV noble gas ions

The creation of bombardment induced damage structures on a nickel (110) surface has been studied as a function of ion mass, ion energy and bombardment temperature. The damage creation curves which were measured with low energy ion scattering (LEIS) could be described by a function of the form N₀[1-exp(-D/D₀)] ^{1 2}, in which D is the bombardment dose, N₀ is the number of damage sites at saturation and D₀ is a characteristic dose. It was found that N₀ does not depend on the mass and energy of the bombarding ion or on the bombardment temperature up to 100°C. The characteristic dose D₀ depends strongly on the bombardment temperature and on the ion mass. The observed energy dependence of D₀ was rather weak. The results are discussed in terms of a model which takes into account clustering of vacancies which are created by sputtering of surface atoms and of annealing by diffusion of thermally activated adatoms.