Eur. Phys. J. D 38, 129-138 (2006)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2005-00284-4

Effect of the molecular structure on the gas-surface scattering studied by supersonic molecular beam

¹ Surface Chemistry Laboratory, RIKEN (Institute of Chemical and Physical Research), 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako, Saitama, 351-0198, Japan
² National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) AIST Tsukuba Central 2, 1-1-1 Umezono, Tsukuba, 305-8568, Japan
³ Department of Advanced Materials Science, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Chiba, 277-8561, Japan

Corresponding authors: ^a takahiro@riken.jp - ^b maki@riken.jp

Received: 20 July 2005
Revised: 20 September 2005
Published online: 25 October 2005

Abstract

The experimental apparatus for investigating the gas-surface interaction has been newly developed. The coherent length of the helium, the energy resolution and the angular spread of the beam in the apparatus were established as ω= 16 nm, and Δθ= 0.5^○, respectively, through the measurements of the time-of-flight of He beam and of the angular intensity distributions of He scattered from LiF(001). The angular intensity distributions of Ar, N₂ and CO scattered from the LiF(001) surface along the [100] azimuthal direction were then measured as a function of incident translational energy. The effects of the molecular structural anisotropy and center-of-mass position on the gas-surface inelastic collision at the corrugated surface are discussed with predictions based on a recently developed simple classical theory of the ellipsoid-washboard model.