SRIM is popular in the ion implantation research and technology community, and also used widely in other branches of radiation material science.
[2][3] The programs were developed by James F. Ziegler and Jochen P. Biersack around 1983 [1][4] and are being continuously upgraded with the major changes occurring approximately every five years.
[5] SRIM is based on a Monte Carlo simulation method, namely the binary collision approximation[6][7][8] with a random selection of the impact parameter of the next colliding ion.
Another part of the software allows calculating the electronic stopping power of any ion in any material (including gaseous targets) based on an averaging parametrization of a vast range of experimental data.
Other approximations of the program include binary collision (i.e. the influence of neighboring atoms is neglected); the material is fully amorphous, i.e. description of ion channeling effects[9] is not possible, recombination of knocked off atoms (interstitials) with the vacancies,[10] an effect known to be very important in heat spikes in metals,[11] is neglected; There is no description of defect clustering and irradiation-induced amorphization, even though the former occurs in most materials[12][13] and the latter is very important in semiconductors.