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Highly energetic ions that impact materials have applications fromsemiconductor industry to medicine, and are fundamentally interesting as theytrigger multi-length and time-scale processes. In particular, they exciteelectrons into non-thermalized energy distributions with subsequentnon-equilibrium electron-electron and electron-ion dynamics. In order toachieve a quantitative description of these, we propose a generalfirst-principles framework that bridges time scales from ultrafast electrondynamics directly after impact, to ion diffusion over migration barriers insemiconductors. We apply it to magnesium oxide under proton irradiation anddiscover a diffusion mechanism that is mediated by hot electrons. Ourquantitative simulations show that this mechanism strongly depends on theprojectile-ion velocity. This indicates that it may occur only at a specificpenetration depth in the target and that it can be triggered by varying thekinetic energy of the particle radiation. Either of these predictions shouldfacilitate direct experimental observation of this effect and significantlyadvances current understanding of non-equilibrium electron-ion dynamics.

Hot-electron mediated ion diffusion in proton-irradiated magnesium oxide