Reaction dynamics following keV cluster bombardment

The nature of the regions that are favorable for chemical reactions has been investigated for a pure amorphous water ice substrate following energetic bombardment by C₆₀ and Au₃ cluster projectiles using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The simulations show that both projectiles, especially C₆₀, produce regions where a plethora of reactions occur at elevated densities indicating that multiple atoms or molecules are involved simultaneously in the reactions initiated by cluster bombardment. The total number of reacted water molecules is significantly less than the total sputtering yield, which confirms that both cluster projectiles are useful for molecular depth profiling experiments.