Surface-Induced Dissociation of Low Energy H+2 Impact on a Carbon Surface: A Monte Carlo Simulation

Abstract

A Monte Carlo simulation based on the classical binary collision approximation is performed to investigate the interaction of H+2 ions with the carbon target. The incident H+2 ion is characterized by its translational energy, eigenenergy and population of the vibrational state, and orientation of the ion with respect to the target surface. It is shown that experimentally determined energy resolved mass spectrum of H+2 can be nicely reproduced with the help of the proposed model. These simulations predict that translational to vibrational (T → V) energy transfer efficiency increases nonlinearly with translational energy of the incident ion. T → V energy transfer efficiency along with the initial vibrational energy of the incident H+2 ion found to play an important role in dissociation. Our simulations also show that the fraction of absorbed, reflected, and dissociated ions depends on the translational energy. The average vibrational energy of reflected H+2 increases with its initial translational energy. Moreover, average number of collisions required for dissociation varies inversely with the initial translational energy of the H+2.