Abstract
We measured energy distributions of electrons emitted in the interaction of with Al surfaces at incident ion energies in the range . The data allow to correlate emission intensities with spectral signatures of electron excitation processes. We find a remarkable contribution to electron emission from asymmetric collisions between incoming ions that have survived neutralization at the surface and target atoms, leading to excitation via a vacancy transfer process. We observe that the total electron emission yields sharp increases by more than an order of magnitude at impact energies above the threshold for this process.
- Received 30 November 2006
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.75.045424
©2007 American Physical Society