Abstract
The loss of weight of target material as a function of dose of 39 keV ions injected at room temperature, as well as the amount of projectile material trapped, has been measured for 13 metal ion-target combinations in simultaneous experiments. The results are correlated with the sputtering model of saturation which is based on the assumption of no movement of trapped atoms. It is shown that the model is completely inadequate in describing the results and that diffusion of trapped atoms in the target must be occurring. For some ions on Zn, Cd and Pb targets the trapped amount increases linearly with dose in spite of a high sputtering rate.