The possible role of anisotropy in kinetic electronic excitation of solids by particle bombardment

The kinetic excitation of a solid surface by impact of energetic particles is investigated by means of internal electron emission across a buried metal-insulator-metal (MIM) tunnel junction. By bombarding the top metal surface of such a device with keV noble gas ions, internal emission yields were determined as a function of projectile impact energy and angle of incidence with respect to the surface normal. In order to understand the observed impact angle dependence, we apply a modified formalism originally published to describe external electron emission. As a result, we find that the measured data can be explained by assuming the spatial distribution of excited electrons propagating towards the buried oxide interface to be strongly influenced by the projectile impact angle. A simple ballistic model assuming excited electrons generated by direct collisions with the projectile to preferably propagate along the direction of the original projectile motion, while electrons excited by scattering from moving recoils propagate isotropically, appears to describe the observed experimental data quite well.