Determination of thicknesses of oxide films grown on titanium under argon irradiation by spectroscopic ellipsometry

In this article we present a study of the oxidation of pure titanium bulk samples under argon ion irradiation at 500 °C under rarefied air. In particular we follow the dependence of the oxide thickness as a function of the energy of argon ions. The novelty of this study consists in the range of ion energy explored, from 1 to 9 MeV. Until very recently it was commonly accepted that metal surfaces were transparent to ion beams in this low energy range (few MeV), and no surface modifications were expected. In a previous paper by the authors of this work, the formation of shallow craters in the surface of titanium was reported as a result of argon ion bombardment with energies of 2, 4 and 9 MeV under the same environmental conditions. We show here that around 3 MeV the oxide growth is unexpectedly enhanced. We think that an interplay of electronic excitations and nuclear ballistic collisions could possibly explain this enhanced oxide growth. We have used spectroscopic visible ultraviolet ellipsometry and XPS to determine the thickness of the oxide layers and characterize their optical properties. From the optical properties of the oxides we observed that for ion energies below 3-4 MeV the oxides show a dielectric-like behavior, whereas for ion energies above 3-4 MeV the oxides show a metal-like behavior. These findings indicate also that ion bombardment in this energy range may change substantially the oxygen-to-titanium ratio in the oxide films grown under irradiation leading to the formation of titanium sub-oxides.