Calculations of the energy accommodation coefficient for gas–surface interactions

Abstract

Calculations are carried out for the energy accommodation coefficient at a gas–surface interface using a recently developed classical mechanical theory of atom–surface collisions that includes both direct scattering and trapping–desorption processes in the physisorption well of the interaction potential. Full three-dimensional calculations are compared with the available data for the accommodation of rare gases at a tungsten surface and reasonable agreement is found for the heavier gases for which classical physics is expected to be valid at all measured temperatures.