Helium-surface interaction potential of Sb(111) from scattering experiments and close-coupling calculations

Abstract

Helium atom scattering (HAS) was used to study the antimony Sb(111) surface beyond the hard-wall model. HAS angular distributions and drift spectra show a number of selective adsorption resonance features, which correspond to five bound-state energies for He atoms trapped in the surface-averaged He-Sb(111) potential. As their best representation, a 9-3 potential with a depth of 4.4±0.1 meV was determined. Furthermore, the charge density corrugation of the surface was analyzed using close-coupling calculations. By using a hybrid potential, consisting of a corrugated Morse potential (short range) and a 9-3 potential (long range), a peak-to-peak corrugation of 17% was obtained. The kinematic focusing effects that occurred were in good agreement with surface phonon dispersion curves from already published density functional perturbation theory calculations. © 2013 American Physical Society.