A novel method for the determination of the energies of impurity ions bombarding a solid surface exposed to a low pressure plasma

Abstract

A technique is presented for the determination of the projected range of metallic ions implanted into a carbon (or silicon) probe from which their impact energy is calculated. The projected range is evaluated from the increase in intensity of a photoelectron or Auger signal from the impurities upon selective chemical etching of the probe by atomic hydrogen. During etching of the substrate the implanted impurities accumulate on the surface resulting in an increase of the signal intensity up to a saturation value. Experimental data is presented for a carbon probe exposed to the scrape-off layer of the TCA tokamak.