Evaluation of surface damage on organic materials irradiated with Ar cluster ion beam

The sputtering yields of organic materials under large cluster ion bombardment are much higher than those under conventional monomer ion bombardment. The sputtering rate of arginine remains constant with fluence for an Ar cluster ion beam, but decreases with fluence for Ar monomer. Additionally, because Ar cluster etching induces little damage, Ar cluster ion can be used to achieve molecular depth profiling of organic materials. In this study, we evaluated the damage to poly methyl methacrylate (PMMA) and arginine samples irradiated with Ar atomic and Ar cluster ion beams. Arginine samples were analyzed by secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) and PMMA samples were analyzed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The chemical structure of organic materials remained unchanged after Ar cluster irradiation, but was seriously damaged. These results indicated that bombardment with Ar cluster ions induced less surface damage than bombardment with Ar atomic ion. The damage layer thickness with 5 keV Ar cluster ion bombardment was less than 1 nm.