Impact and energy deposition of slow, highly charged ions on a solid surface

A plasma region in nanometer scale may be created by a highly charged ion impact on solid surface. The charge imbalance leads to enormous electric fields and may further induce Coulomb explosion due to electrostatic repulsion in the region. Thus, the highly charged ion is thus expected to be a powerful tool to induce surface modification in the nanometer scale. The Coulomb explosion model is applied in order to interpret the interaction mechanism and to understand the impact and energy deposition of highly charged ions on a solid surface, and to obtain the energy deposited by the ion. The energy deposition ratio is dependent on the material and charge. A high temperature and high pressure environment will be formed by the deposited energy, causing the atoms to swell up and a hillock nano-defect to be formed on surface. The height of hillock is estimated from the Coulomb explosion.