Growth and disintegration of cones on silver surface under high fluence Xe atom bombardment

Several stages of cone growth, and later stages of disintegration, initiated by diamond microparticle contamination of polished silver surfaces were studied using a semidynamic method. Bombarding doses of 6 keV Xe atoms, were increased up to 2.5 x 1019 ions/cm2 in several consecutive steps. Once the surface cone growth is initiated, further growth is a complex function of sputtering yield variation with changing incident angle of primary particles, sputter deposition, resputtering of the deposited material on and from adjacent surface structures, and of surface diffusion of the sputtered material across the bombarded surface. Orginally formed cones grow and fuse together forming large supercones. After reaching the critical dimensions, these supercones disintegrate to small, irregular and highly unstable surface structures. (author)