How surface roughness affects the angular dependence of the sputtering yield

Comprehensive model is developed to study the impact of surface roughness on the angular dependence of sputtering yield. Instead of assuming surfaces to be flat or composed of exact self-similar fractals, we developed a new method to describe the surfaces. Random fractal surfaces generated by midpoint displacement algorithm in computer graphics area and Support vector machine algorithm in pattern recognition area are combined with the Monte Carlo ion bombardment simulation code, i.e., Ion Transport in Materials and Compounds (ITMC) code [1]. With this new fractal version of ITMC-F, we successfully simulated the angular dependence of sputtering yield for various ion-target combinations. Examples are given for 5 keV Ar ions bombarding iron, graphite, and silicon surfaces, with the input surface roughness exponent directly depicted from experimental data. Comparison is made with previous models to account for surface roughness and recent experimental data. The ITMC-F code showed good agreement with the experimental data. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.