He atom scattering from ZnO surfaces: calculation of diffraction peak intensities using the close-coupling approach

A Giant Reconstruction of α-quartz (0001) Interpreted as Three Domains of Nano Dauphine Twins

Silica (SiO₂) is one of the most common materials on Earth. The crystalline form α-quartz is the stable silica polymorph at ambient conditions although metastable forms exist. α-quartz is a piezoelectric material, it can be produced artificially and is widely used for example in electronics and the biosciences. Despite the many application areas, the atomic surface structures of silica polymorphs are neither well understood nor well characterized. Here we present measurements of α-quartz (0001). Helium Atom Scattering combined with Atomic Force Microscopy reveals a giant reconstruction consisting of 5.55 ± 0.07 nm wide ribbons, oriented 10.4° ± 0.8° relative to the bulk unit cell. The ribbons, with the aid of atomistic modelling, can be explained as a self-organised pattern of nano Dauphine twins (nano electrical twins).

Semiclassical multi-phonon theory for atom-surface scattering: Application to the Cu(111) system

The semiclassical perturbation theory of Hubbard and Miller [J. Chem. Phys. 80, 5827 (1984)] is further developed to include the full multi-phonon transitions in atom-surface scattering. A practically applicable expression is developed for the angular scattering distribution by utilising a discretized bath of oscillators, instead of the continuum limit. At sufficiently low surface temperature good agreement is found between the present multi-phonon theory and the previous one-, and two-phonon theory derived in the continuum limit in our previous study [Daon, Pollak, and Miret-Artés, J. Chem. Phys. 137, 201103 (2012)]. The theory is applied to the measured angular distributions of Ne, Ar, and Kr scattered from a Cu(111) surface. We find that the present multi-phonon theory substantially improves the agreement between experiment and theory, especially at the higher surface temperatures. This provides evidence for the importance of multi-phonon transitions in determining the angular distribution as the surface temperature is increased.