Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 May 2016
We present recent results for the yields of Si and O, produced in the sputtering of SiO2 by ions of different masses, and show the importance of sputtering by heavy particles at low streaming velocities. These data are incorporated in a C-shock model to study the erosion of interstellar grains and the release of silicon through non-thermal sputtering within the shock. Once in the gas phase, the atomic silicon reacts with O2 and is rapidly transformed into SiO. The column densities of SiO thus calculated are compared with the observations of molecular outflows with a satisfactory agreement. In the postshock gas, SiO disappears from the gas phase through the reaction SiO(OH,H)SiO2 and SiO2 remains, unseen, in the cold dense gas. This could explain the extremely low upper limits of SiO deduced from observations of dark clouds.