Soft-landing ion deposition facility
In order to deposit radioactive probe atoms with very high purity on metal surfaces,
we developed a unique setup: the soft-landing ion deposition facility.
With this set up we are able to decelerate mass-separated 50 keV ions
to energies below 5 eV and deposit them under
UHV conditions on a sample.
In-situ PAC
and Mössbauer experiments can be performed on the deposited atoms
at sample temperatures ranging from 30-400 K.
In the near future, the soft-landing chamber will be coupled to a
MBE setup,
enabling us to incorparate hyperfine probes at well defined positions
in multilayers and thin films.
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Impression of a 50 eV
111In atom immediately after deposition
on top of a Cu(100) surface.
This configuration was calculated using the molecular dynamics method
employing Finnis-Sinclair interatomic potentials.
As can be seen, some disorder is introduced into the surface layer at this deposition energy.
With our soft-landing setup we can go to deposition energies as small as
5 eV.
According to computer simulations and
PAC-experiments
no lattice damage is introduced in the surface layer at such energies.
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