The effect of the molecular mass on the sputtering by electrosprayed nanodroplets

Energetic bombardment of covalently bonded materials by electrosprayed nanodroplets causes sputtering and topographic changes on the surface of the target. This work investigates the influence of the projectile's molecular mass on these phenomena by sputtering single-crystal silicon wafers with a variety of liquids (molecular masses between 45.0 and 773.3 amu), and acceleration voltages. The electrosprays are characterized via time of flight to determine the charge to mass ratio of the nanodroplets which, together with the acceleration voltage, yield the impact velocity, the stagnation pressure, and the molecular kinetic energy of the projectile. The estimated range of droplet diameters is 20-79 nm, while the impact velocity, the stagnation pressure and the molecular kinetic energy range between 2.9-10 km/s, 4.7-63 GPa, and 2.1-98 eV. We find that the damage on the surface of the targets strongly depends on the molecular mass of the projectile: liquids with low molecular mass sputter significantly less and produce nanometric indentations and low surface roughness, the latter increasing moderately with stagnation pressure; in contrast, the roughness and sputtering caused by the impacts of droplets with larger molecular mass reach significantly higher values, and exhibit non-monotonic behaviors. The maximum sputtering yields for formamide, EAN, EMI-BF4, EMI-Im, TES, and TPP are 0.20, 0.75, 1.20, 2.80, 4.00 and 2.90 silicon atoms per molecule in the projectile. These trends indicate that despite their rather large diameters, the sputtering by electrosprayed nanodroplets is intrinsically a molecular scale phenomenon.