The topography of ion-bombarded surfaces

The nature of the response of a surface to ion beams is strongly materials dependent. The effects are separated into primary, secondary and tertiary. Primary sputtering deals with the simplest situation where the concern is to describe evolution with increasing dose from an original profile considering only the variation of sputtering yield with angle of ion incidence. Secondary effects add to primary sputtering. Secondary fluxes, surface energy and spatial variation of sputter yield due to dislocations, grain boundaries and single ion impact are considered in turn. Tertiary effects include some of the consequences of forming multi-element or multi-phase surfaces. 84 refs.; 46 figs