SIMULATION OF ENERGETIC CLUSTER IMPACTS ON METALLIC TARGETS

We review recent progress in the use of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to study the energetic collisions of cluster ions with metallic surfaces. MD simulations have been used to predict the energy, number-density, and confinement-time properties of the highly nonlinear collision cascades initiated by cluster impacts; as well as to predict the yields, energy-distributions, and angle-distributions of ejected cluster-atoms and target-atoms.