Florian Apolloner

Surface Structure of Bi(111) from Helium Atom Scattering Measurements. Inelastic Close-Coupling Formalism.

Elastic and inelastic close-coupling (CC) calculations have been used to extract information about the corrugation amplitude and the surface vibrational atomic displacement by fitting to several experimental diffraction patterns. To model the three-dimensional interaction between the He atom and the Bi(111) surface under investigation, a corrugated Morse potential has been assumed. Two different types of calculations are used to obtain theoretical diffraction intensities at three surface temperatures along the two symmetry directions. Type one consists of solving the elastic CC (eCC) and attenuating the corresponding diffraction intensities by a global Debye–Waller (DW) factor. The second one, within a unitary theory, is derived from merely solving the inelastic CC (iCC) equations, where no DW factor is necessary to include. While both methods arrive at similar predictions for the peak-to-peak corrugation value, the variance of the value obtained by the iCC method is much better. Furthermore, the more extensive calculation is better suited to model the temperature induced signal asymmetries and renders the inclusion for a second Debye temperature for the diffraction peaks futile.

Adhesion properties of hydrogen on Sb(111) probed by helium atom scattering

We have carried out a series of helium atom scattering measurements in order to characterise the adsorption properties of hydrogen on antimony(111). Molecular hydrogen does not adsorb at temperatures above 110 K in contrast to pre-dissociated atomic hydrogen. Depending on the substrate temperature, two different adlayer phases of atomic hydrogen on Sb(111) occur. At low substrate temperatures (110 K), the deposited hydrogen layer does not show any ordering while we observe a perfectly ordered H/Sb(111) structure for deposition at room temperature. Furthermore, the amorphous hydrogen layer deposited at low temperature forms an ordered overlayer upon heating the crystal to room temperature. Hydrogen starts to desorb at which corresponds to a desorption energy of . Using measurements of the helium reflectivity during hydrogen exposure at different surface temperatures, we conclude that the initial sticking coefficient of atomic hydrogen on Sb(111) decreases with increasing surface temperature. Furthermore, the scattering cross-section for the diffuse scattering of helium from hydrogen on Sb(111) is determined as .