Abstract
It has been known for some time1 that alkali halide surfaces can be efficiently sputtered in ultrahigh vacuum by electron and photon bombardment at energles well below the core-level excitaron thresholds. For some time, we have been doing experiments deslgned to elucidate the detailed atomic-scale dynamics of both electron- and photon-stimulated desorption (ESD/PSD) processes on alkali halide crystals, including measurement of yields as a function of bombarding energy and surface temperature, velocity distributions, and desorption yield as a function of time following irradiation for both ground-state and excited-state neutral atoms. Laser-lnduced fluorescence (LIF) spectroscopy has played a key role in these studies2 by allowing the labeling of desorbing ground- state neutral atoms, thus allowing for direct comparison between ground-state and excited-state desorption mechanisms. Since the neutral desorbing species outnumber the desorbing ions by several orders of magnitude, this technique allows us to analyze the dominant channels through which electronic energy deposited in a surface is redirected to produce bond breaking and ultimately desorption, erosion, and ablation.
© 1986 Optical Society of America
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