Dynamic zone structure model for the surface scattering of large van der Waals clusters at thermal kinetic energies

Abstract

A semiempirical dynamic zone structure model is presented to explain the behavior of the grazing exit angle component previously observed in experiment and simulation during the scattering of large van der Waals clusters from surfaces. The proposed model that is based on a simple energy balance and the Leidenfrost phenomenon does not only qualitatively reproduce the measured importance of the grazing exit angle component as a function of incident cluster size, incident velocity, angle of incidence, and surface temperature, but it also gives an order-of-magnitude estimate for the size of the large fragments scattered in this component and for the involved picosecond interaction times. Recent results obtained from both trajectory calculations and experiments show very good agreement with the predictions concluded from the proposed model.