Mechanisms for the reflection of light atoms from crystal surfaces at kilovolt energies

Abstract

The computer program MARLOWE was used to investigate the backscattering of protons from the (110) surface of a nickel crystal. Grazing incidence was considered so that anisotropic effects originated mainly from the surface region. The contribution of aligned scattering was studied by comparing the results with similar calculations for an amorphous target. Energy distributions of backscattered particles were investigated for incident energies ranging from 0.1 to 5keV. The structure of these distributions was explained by making calculations for several target thickness. Specular reflection was found to depend on the structure of the first few atomic planes only. The (110) rows in the surface plane were responsible for focusing into surface semichannels. Focusing in these semichannels was found to be the strongest under total reflection conditions (below about 1.3 KeV) while the scattering intensity from surface rows increased with increasing incident energy. The orientation of the plane of incidence was found to have large influence on the relative contributions of the reflection mechanisms involved.