SPUTTERING YIELDS OF ELECTROCHEMICALLY DEPOSITED METAL AND METAL OXIDE THIN FILMS.

A quartz crystal microbalance is used to examine the sputtering yields (1 Kev Ar) of electrodeposited nickel, iron and the thermally grown oxides of these materials. The yields (g multiplied by (times) ion** minus **1) determined for the metals agree well with those found in the literature. Initial sputtering yields for the oxides are shown to decrease in an exponential manner to a constant value which is significantly lower than that of the metal. Damage cross sections are calculated from these data for argon ions incident upon these materials. XPS is used to examine the chemical consequences of ion bombardment of the oxides. In both cases some of the oxide is reduced to the metal and the metal to oxygen ratio correspondingly increases.