Classical trajectory study of collisions of Ar with alkanethiolate self-assembled monolayers: potential-energy surface effects on dynamics

We have investigated collisions between Ar and alkanethiolate self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) using classical trajectory calculations with several potential-energy surfaces. The legitimacy of the potential-energy surfaces is established through comparison with molecular-beam data and ab initio calculations. Potential-energy surfaces used in previous work overestimate the binding of Ar to the SAM, leading to larger energy transfer than found in the experiments. New calculations, based on empirical force fields that better reproduce ab initio calculations, exhibit improved agreement with the experiments. In particular, polar-angle-dependent average energies calculated with explicit-atom potential-energy surfaces are in excellent agreement with the experiments. Polar- and azimuthal-angle-dependent product translational energies are examined to gain deeper insight into the dynamics of Ar+SAM collisions.