Low-energy (≤ 200 eV) ion irradiation during crystal growth from the vapor phase can be used to provide new chemical reaction pathways, modify film-growth kinetics, and, hence, controllably alter the physical properties of films deposited by a variety of techniques. The latter includes sputter deposition, ion plating, plasma-assisted chemical vapor deposition (PA-CVD), primary-ion deposition (PID), and molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) using accelerated beam sources. Ion/surface interaction effects such as ion-induced chemistry, trapping, recoil implantation, preferential sputtering, collisional mixing, enhanced diffusion, and alteration in segregation behavior are used to interpret and model experimental results concerning the effects of low-energy particle bombardment on nucleation and growth kinetics, elemental incorporation probabilities, compositional depth distributions, and the growth of metastable phases.
The role of passive film growth kinetics and properties in stress corrosion and crevice corrosion susceptibility
