Auger Crater Edge Profiling by Water Droplet Impact

Abstract

  The charged water droplets used in electrospray droplet impact (EDI) are extremely large cluster ions with masses of about a few 10⁶ u. When a target is etched by EDI, the physical sputtering of the target does not take place to the recognizable extent. The etched surfaces of TiO₂ thin film on Si(100) by EDI were evaluated by AES crater edge profiling. We found that TiO₂ thin film do not suffer from de-oxygenation by EDI etching.