Giant Metal Sputtering Yields Induced by 20–5000 keV/atom Gold Clusters

Very large nonlinear effects have been found in Au₁ to Au₅ cluster-induced metal sputtering yield measurements over a broad projectile energy interval from 20 keV/atom to 5 MeV/atom. The sputtering yield maxima were found at the same total energy but not at the same energy/atom as expected. For Au₅ a yield as high as 3000 was reached at 150 keV/atom while the Au₁ yield was only 55 at the same velocity.