Electron scattering interaction

Electrons interact with solid surfaces by elastic and inelastic scattering, and these interactions are employed in electron spectroscopy. For example, electrons that elastically scatter will diffract from a single-crystal lattice. The diffraction pattern can be used as a means of stnictural detenuination, as in FEED. Electrons scatter inelastically by inducing electronic and vibrational excitations in the surface region. These losses fonu the basis of electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS). An incident electron can also knock out an iimer-shell, or core, electron from an atom in the solid that will, in turn, initiate an Auger process. Electrons can also be used to induce stimulated desorption, as described in section Al.7.5.6. 

To see how this works, consider elastic scattering in a situation where the electron-target interaction can be... 

The atomic scattering factor for electrons is somewhat more complicated. It is again a Fourier transfonn of a density of scattering matter, but, because the electron is a charged particle, it interacts with the nucleus as well as with the electron cloud. Thus p(r) in equation (B1.8.2h) is replaced by (p(r), the electrostatic potential of an electron situated at radius r from the nucleus. Under a range of conditions the electron scattering factor, y (0, can be represented in temis... 

A substantial number of electrons are elastically scattered, and this gives rise to a strong elastic peak in the spectrum. When an electron of low energy (2-5 eY) approaches a surface, it can be scattered inelastically by two basic mechanisms, and the data obtained are dependent upon the experimental geometry - specifically the angles of the incident and the (analysed) scattered beams with respect to the surface (0 and 02 in Figure 5.47). Within a certain distance of the surface the incident electron can interact with the dipole field associated a particular surface vibration, e.g. either the vibrations of the surface atoms of the substrate itself, or one or other... 

Fig. 10. The emerging picture of electronically nonadiabatic interactions of NO molecule scattering at a metal surfaces. Transition from the ground electronic state to an anionic state which is strongly attractive to the metal surface can be accomplished by high translational energy when vibrational excitation is low (black trajectory). When vibrational motion is highly excited, even low translational energies allow transition of the anionic state (red trajectory). Recently, Monte-Carlo wavepacket calculations have been carried out which tend to support this picture.63...

Parity violating electron scattering. Recently it has been proposed to use the (parity violating) weak interaction to probe the neutron distribution. This is probably the least model dependent approach [31]. The weak potential between electron and a nucleus... 

Figure 8.3 The vibrational elastic and inelastic differential cross sections for electron scattering off LiF at = 5.44 eV (Alhassid and Shao, 1992b, where the source of the data is given). Solid lines with an improved dipole interaction [which breaks the 0(4) symmetry]. Long dashed lines the calculations by Bijker and Amado (1986). The short dashed lines are the Bom approximation.

With the availability of lasers, Brillouin scattering can now be used more confidently to study electron-phonon interactions and to probe the energy, damping and relative weight of the various hydro-dynamic collective modes in anharmonic insulating crystals.The connection between the intensity and spectral distribution of scattered light and the nuclear displacement-displacement correlation function has been extensively discussed by Griffin 236). 

Briefly, XANES is associated with the excitation process of a core electron to bound and quasibound states, where the bound states interacting with the continuum are located below the ionization threshold (vacuum level) and the quasibound states interacting with the continuum are located above or near the threshold. Thus, XANES contains information about the electronic state of the x-ray absorbing atom and the local surrounding structure. However, as stated above, unhke EXAES, since the excitation process essentially involves multielectron and multiple scattering interactions, interpretation of XANES data is substantially more complicated than that of EXAFS data. 

In the vicinity of the atomic absorption edges, the participation of free and bound excited states in the scattering process can no longer be ignored. The first term in the interaction Hamiltonian of Eq. (1.11) leads, in second-order perturbation theory, to a resonance scattering contribution (in units of classical electron scattering) equal to (Gerward et al. 1979, Blume 1994)4... 

EM provides local structural information about the samples in both real and reciprocal space, for example local structural information about the surface and the bulk of the sample at the atomic level, together with chemical, electronic and three-dimensional structural information are now routinely available. Some of these methods are described in this chapter. Electron-sample interactions and scattering are fundamental to EM. EM is a diffraction technique in which crystals diffract electrons in accordance with Bragg s law, nX = Idhki sin 9, where X is the... 

In electron-sample interactions, x-rays can be formed during inelastic scattering of electrons. The following principles describe the generation and character of the x-rays. 

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