Theoretical electronic state and angular resolved kinetic energy distributions of sputtered diatomic molecules

Abstract

Electronic state selected translational kinetic energy and polar angular distributions of several homonuclear and heteronuclear diatomic molecules, corresponding to direct ejection and recombination mechanisms of sputtering, are presented. The initial atom separation on, and axis orientation to, the surface are only weakly reflected in the distributions, in contrast to the atomic cascade properties and ejection mechanism. Many observed features of kinetic energy distributions can be reproduced by the simulation, including additional peaks previously interpreted as due to thermal or other processes. Measurements of polar angular distributions are shown to contain important information on atom-pair momentum correlations in collision cascades.