Heavy-ion-induced desorption of organic molecules studied with Langmuir-Blodgett multilayer systems

Heavy-ion-induced desorption has been studied with samples consisting of Langmuir-Blodgett films made from Cd salts of fatty acids. The experiments confirm the result of previous works that heavy ions drill a crater into the sample surface. The explicit dependence of the crater depth on the electronic energy loss could be determined from the experiments. The craters exhibit the shape of a symmetric cone as obtained from a desorption model applied to the experimental data.