Sputtering of iron, chromium and tungsten by energetic deuterium ion bombardment

• Sputtering of Fe, Cr and W due to energetic D was measured.
• Data are fitted with semi-empirical formulae by Bohdansky, Eckstein and Yamamura.
• Data are compared with results of BCA codes SDTrimSP and SRIM.
• SDTrimSP results show good agreement with measured data.
• SRIM fails to describe the near-threshold region.

Sputtering of the pure materials iron (Fe), chromium (Cr) and tungsten (W) due to energetic deuterium (D) ion bombardment was investigated. These materials are important constituents of reduced-activation ferritic-martensitic steels. Sputtering yields were measured as a function of the D ion energy from 60 to 2000 eV/D. The obtained data can be well reproduced by a semi-empirical formula suggested by Bohdansky, and the corresponding fitting parameters are provided. It is confirmed that analytical formulae suggested by Eckstein and Yamamura agree satisfactorily with these experimental data. By comparison with results from the binary-collision-approximation-based calculation codes SDTrimSP and SRIM it is found that SRIM has some limitations in simulating sputter yield close to the threshold whereas SDTrimSP results show good agreement with measured data in the investigated energy range.