The mechanism of excited ion emission

Mechanisms of sputtered excited ion formation under bombardment of light metals have been considered. A quantitative analysis of experimental data on ion-photon, ion-electron and ion-ion emissions within a common kinetic mechanism has been carried out. High efficiency of this mechanism for formation of excited Mg II and Al II ions has been quantitatively shown. A preferential population of the triplet states of the excited Al II ions has been explained. The kinetic mechanism (KM) is shown to be not responsible for excited Be II ion emission in the range of the primary ion energy of ～1–10 keV. A quantitative estimate is reported and high efficiency of the ‘shake-up’-type mechanism for excited Be II ion formation is shown. The probability of exciting the sputtered ions by secondary electrons is shown to be low.