Present Understanding of Atomistic Processes

Since the reviews on chemical erosion of carbon in 1992 [35] considerable improvements have been reached in the fundamental understanding. The thorough investigations by Horn et al. [39] on the thermal chemical reactivity has been extended to the case of energetic ion bombardment by Roth and Garcfa-Rosales [41]. Simultaneously, new ion beam experiments at energies down to 10 eV [36-38] have improved the understanding of ion induced hydrocarbon emission. 

Three processes determine the chemical erosion of carbon under low energy hydrogen bombardment [41]  

Similar to the temperature dependence also the energy dependence of chemical sputtering can be reproduced adequately using the analytic description. 

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