Temperature dependence of the sputtering yield of surface metal clusters

The method of molecular dynamics has been used to investigate the influence of thermal oscillations of atoms on the sputtering of surface metal nanoclusters. The sputtering of a copper cluster consisting of 75 atoms from the (100) surface of a copper substrate by 200-eV argon ions for the target being at an equilibrium temperature of 0 and 300 K has been simulated. For each temperature, the sputtering yields have been predicted for both the substrate and the cluster and the polar and azimuthal angular distributions of sputtered atoms have been obtained. The procedure of simulation of two-object cluster-substrate systems at equilibrium temperatures other than 0 K is discussed. __________ Translated from Izvestiya Vysshikh Uchebnykh Zavedenii, Fizika, No. 7, pp. 20–25, July, 2007.