Species selective evaporation during surface scattering of binary van der Waals clusters

Abstract:

We performed both experiments and molecular dynamics simulations for the scattering of mixed from a graphite surface under conditions where evaporation of thermalized small fragments is the main channel to evacuate the excess collision energy of the cluster impact. In spite of the expected thermal nature of the scattering process, we find average temperatures for the evaporating cluster particles that are considerably higher for krypton than for argon. We discuss the possible influence of the involved binding energies and the probable role of the incident cluster structure on these new results.