Grazing Ion-Surface Collisions

Abstract

Electron emission after grazing ion-surface collisions is studied for high impact velocities. We have focused on glancing angles of electron emission where the dominant mechanism is the ionization from atomic bound states. To describe this process, we introduce a quantum model called field distorted-wave (FDW) approximation, which takes into account the effect of the surface interaction on the electronic transition. The FDW model is applied to analyze electron distributions produced by impact of protons on Al and LiF surfaces, which are metal and insulator materials respectively. In the case of metals, we also evaluate the contibution coming from the valence band by employing the binary collisional formalism. Calculated electron emission yields are in reasonable agreement with the available experimental data. We find that the maximum of the convoy electron distribution is accelerated for Al and decelerated for LiF, with respect to its position in ion-atom collisions, in quantitative accordance with experiments.