Electron-stimulated cesium atom desorption from the Cs/CsAu/Au/W system

This paper reports on a continuation of the investigation of electron-stimulated Cs-atom desorption from a tungsten surface on which cesium and gold films had been adsorbed at T = 300 K. Earlier studies revealed that Cs atoms start to desorb only after more than one monolayer of gold and more than one monolayer of cesium had been deposited on the tungsten surface. In this case, a coating consisting of a gold adlayer on tungsten, a CsAu compound possessing semiconducting properties, and a cesium monolayer capping CsAu (Cs/CsAu/Au/W) is formed on the tungsten surface at 300 K. The yield of atoms from this system exhibits a resonant dependence on the incident electron energy E _e , with an appearance threshold of 57 eV and a maximum at 64 eV. In this case, Cs atoms desorb in two channels, with one of them involving Cs desorption out of the cesium monolayer, and the other, from the CsAu monolayer. The Cs yield at E _e = 64 eV has been investigated in both desorption channels, with an additional cesium coating deposited on the already formed Cs/CsAu/Au/W layered system, as well as of the effect annealing produces on the yield and energy distributions of Cs atoms. It has been demonstrated that Cs atoms evaporated at 300 K on a layered coating with a cesium monolayer atop the CsAu layer on tungsten capped with a gold adlayer, rather than reflected from the cesium monolayer or adsorbing on it, penetrate through the cesium monolayer into the bulk of CsAu even with one CsAu layer present. The desorption yield does not vary with increasing cesium concentration at 300 K, but falls off gradually at 160 K. Annealing within the temperature range 320 K ≤ T _H ≤ 400 K destroys the cesium monolayer and the one-layer CsAu coating, but the multilayer CsAu compound does not break up in this temperature range even after evaporation of the cesium monolayer. It is shown that Cs atoms escape from the multilayer CsAu compound primarily out of the top CsAu layer.