Auger decay doubly ionized

Table 6.3 Fano-ADC total and partial Auger decay widths (in meV) for doubly ionized Ne atom...

Interatomic Coulombic decay (ICD) is an electronic decay process that is particularly important for those inner-shell or inner-subshell vacancies that are not energetic enough to give rise to Auger decay. Typical examples include inner-valence-ionized states of rare gas atoms. In isolated systems, such vacancy states are bound to decay radiatively on the nanosecond timescale. A rather different scenario is realized whenever such a low-energy inner-shell-ionized species is let to interact with an environment, for example, in a cluster. In such a case, the existence of the doubly ionized states with positive charges residing on two different cluster units leads to an interatomic (or intermolecular) decay process in which the recombination part of the two-electron transition takes part on one unit, whereas the ionization occurs on another one. ICD [73-75] is mediated by electronic correlation between two atoms (or molecules). In clusters of various sizes and compositions, ICD occurs on the timescale from hundreds of femtoseconds [18] down to several femtoseconds [76-79]. 

In AES, core-hole excitations are created when a beam of electrons, typically with energies between 1 to 10 KeV, is impinged onto the surface. In the decay process, one upper-level electron falls into the vacant core level and a second electron, the Auger electron, is ejected. Since the kinetic energy of the emitted Auger electron is characteristic of the (doubly-ionized) atom, AES is a sensitive technique that provides information on the elemental composition (except H and He) of the interfacial region. Analytical procedures that enable the use of AES as a quantitative technique have been suggested. " ... 

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