2002/04/08 by J. R. Trail, Margaret C. Graham, M. C. Graham +5 · 1 citation
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Ab initio #Advanced Chemical Physics Studies #Atom (system on chip) #Atomic physics #Electron #Excitation #Materials science #Metal #Molecular Junctions and Nanostructures #Molecular physics #Physics #Pseudopotential #Quantum mechanics #Semiclassical physics #Surface (topology) #Surface and Thin Film Phenomena #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.88.166802
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 166802 (2002) · 4 pages, 2 figures
openalex publication_date 2002/04/08 · arxiv created 2009/09/30 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
A method is presented for calculating electron-hole pair excitation due to an incident atom or molecule interacting with a metal surface. Energy loss is described using an ab initio approach that obtains a position-dependent friction coefficient for an adsorbate moving near a metal surface from a total energy pseudopotential calculation. A semiclassical forced oscillator model is constructed to describe excitation of the electron gas due to the incident molecule. This approach is applied to H and D atoms incident on a Cu(111) surface, and we obtain theoretical estimates of the "chemicurrents" measured by Nienhaus et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 446 (1999)] for these atoms incident on the surface of a Schottky diode.