Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2011
A thermal spike model has been developed to describe the phenomenon of ion irradiation-induced grain growth in metal alloy thin films. In single phase films where the driving force for grain growth is the reduction of grain boundary curvature, the model shows that ion-induced grain boundary mobility, Mion, is proportional to the quantity FD 2/ΔHcoh 3, where FD is the ion and recoil energy deposited in nuclear interactions and ΔHcoh is the cohesive energy of the element or alloy. Experimental grain growth results from ion irradiated coevaporated binary alloy films compare favorably with model predictions.