Electron-, photon-, ion- and field-stimulated desorption

Alternative methods to thermal desorption may be used to effect desorption. Although these methods are somewhat beyond the scope of the present review, we mention them briefly here for completeness. 

In the field ion microscope, very high fields can be applied to a surface, sufficient to cause a significant distortion to the potential energy barrier experienced by an atom at the surface, resulting in desorption or field stripping. The method is used to produce the perfect surface to be imaged in the microscope and attempts have also been made to correlate the field required for desorption with the adatom bond energy to the surface [227]. 

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