Effects of varying ion flux on high vacuum evaporated erbium thin films

For the first time, to the best of our knowledge, a comprehensive study has been carried out to investigate the effects of ion beam on erbium thin films. Thin enriched erbium films with areal density ∼50–200 μg/cm2 sandwiched between carbon films were prepared using the high vacuum deposition technique. The samples were bombarded with fluorine ion beam accelerated to 90 MeV energy using a tandem accelerator. Irradiation time was varied for each...