Caesium/xenon dual beam depth profiling: Velocity of the sputtered atom and ionization probability

In this work, a caesium/xenon co-sputtering gun was used to perform depth profiles of a RhSi layer with varying caesium beam concentration. The positive ion yields were monitored with respect to the varying work function of the solid and the intensities of the ions were plotted with respect to the caesium surface concentration. As expected by the tunneling model, all the M⁺ signals decrease exponentially with the increasing caesium beam concentration. Moreover, the heaviest ion yields decrease faster than the lighter ion ones. This phenomenon can be explained by the different velocities of the departing atoms, which has an important impact on the ionization processes. We then studied the variations of the MCs⁺ yields with respect to the caesium surface concentration and with respect to the nature of the departing atom. Finally, we applied models based on the tunneling model in order to fit our results.