Effect of size quantization of the reflection coefficient of an electron beam incident on a thin heteroepitaxial film

Abstract

The effect of size quantization of the reflection coefficient of electrons incident on a thin single-crystal film located on a substrate has been theoretically predicted. Two methods for observing this effect experimentally are proposed. In the first method, the variation in the intensity of the beam of specularly reflected electrons can be measured by varying the small glancing angle α of the electron beam with a particle energy on the order of 10 keV. In the second method, intensity oscillations of the diffracted beam as a function of the variation in the reflection angle β are measured in the case of a small fixed glancing angle α (on the order of 1°–3°). Thus, the second variant corresponds to studying the intensity distribution along streaks (reflexes) in the case of electron diffraction on a smooth surface. In the second case, the appearance of elastically scattered electrons along the streaks between diffraction reflexes is predicted. Their number (the beam intensity) varies periodically as a function of the angle β.