Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 045003 (2009)

Sputtering, a common industrial method for coating surfaces, uses ions in a gas to knock metal atoms from a solid that then fly off to coat a target in a thin film. 'Self-sputtering' is a way to coat targets without the presence of a gas; at higher voltages some of the metal atoms are themselves ionized and return to their solid source, where they dislodge yet more metal atoms.

Now Joakim Andersson and André Anders of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California have created a sort of runaway self-sputtering. It uses pulses of extremely high voltage to make the ion current of the metal atoms exceed the applied electric current.