Extremely low sputtering degradation of polytetrafluoroethylene by C ₆₀ ion beam applied in XPS analysis

We have applied sputtering using a buckminsterfullerene (C 60 ) ion beam for XPS analysis. A practical sputter rate of 2.4 nm min −1 for SiO 2 was obtained for sputtering an area of 5 mm × 5 mm using a 5 kV C 60 ion beam with an energy of 83 eV per carbon atom. Extremely low sputtering degradation of polytetrafluoroethylene was observed in these conditions. The results were compared with argon ion beam energies of 500 V and 5 kV. These are the first results utilizing a C 60 ion beam for XPS analysis with limited sputtering damage.