The Rossendorf Two Source Facility – A Device for the Observation of the Interaction of Slow Highly Charged Ions with Surfaces

The interaction of slow highly charged ions with solid surfaces is mainly characterized by the high amount of potential energy stored in the ions and discharged on the surface. Thereby the potential energy is the sum of the ionization energies of all removed electrons. While the kinetic energy of an ion scales linearly with the charge state, its potential energy grows rapidly with each removed electron. Figure 1 shows the ionization energy and the resulting potential energy of iron ions of different charge states. The ion bombardment of solid surfaces with HCIs can lead to various changes in surface morphology [1-4]. The Rossendorf Two Source Facility presents a world wide unique ion beam facility consisting of two ion sources and providing ions of adjustable charge state and kinetic energy. These two sources are: a 14.5 GHz-Electron-Cyclotron-Resonance (ECR) ion source (Super Nanogan / Pantechnik) and an Electron Beam Ion Trap (Dresden EBIT / Leybold Vacuum Dresden GmbH) operating at room temperature [5,6,7].