Calculations of Trapping and Desorption in Heavy Atom Collisions with Surfaces

TL;DR

This paper presents a classical theoretical approach to model heavy atom scattering from surfaces, accurately predicting trapping and desorption behaviors with experimental validation for xenon on molten gallium and indium.

Contribution

It introduces a new classical method capable of tracking trapped particles in physisorption wells until desorption, validated against experimental data.

Findings

Good agreement with experimental scattering data

Estimated physisorption well depths for Xe-Ga and Xe-In

Validated classical approach for heavy atom-surface interactions

Abstract

Calculations are carried out for the scattering of heavy rare gas atoms with surfaces using a recently developed classical theory that can track particles trapped in the physisorption potential well and follow them until ultimate desorption. Comparisons are made with recent experimental data for xenon scattering from molten gallium and indium, systems for which the rare gas is heavier than the surface atoms. The good agreement with the data obtained for both time-of-flight energy-resolved spectra and for total scattered angular distributions yields an estimate of the physisorption well depths for the two systems.