Bombardment induced cascade mixing and the importance of post-cascade relaxation

A molecular dynamics multiple interactions simulation computer code has been used to study the near-surface effect of cascade mixing due to ion bombardment. 90% of all moved atoms recoil forward or backward only one layer and 70% of all recoil atoms are displaced to their nearest neighbour positions. A comparison of the computed results and the results predicted from statistical theories indicates that both models would produce similar results if the lower limit in the energy threshold of the statistical theories were decreased sufficiently to include the movement of many more low energy recoils. A further comparison is made between the distributions of recoil-atom displacements at the end of the dynamic regime, and after the damaged crystallite has coalesced. There is a small degree of rearrangement, due to the collapse of collision spikes, but the resultant displacement distributions are similar. © 1983