Angular and energy distributions of low energy electrons from backscattered-conversion electron Mössbauer spectroscopy

Angular and energy distributions of backscattered-low energy resonant and nonresonant electrons from iron films are studied both theoretically and experimentally. The results indicate that relatively few emerging resonant or nonresonant electrons are observed/predicted between 600 eV and 50 eV kinetic energy. A significant fraction of the total electron signal emerges, however, below 50 eV, which is shown to result from low energy Auger cascades, low energy shake-off electrons and secondary electrons attributed to higher energy events. The large number of low energy electrons permits relatively short acquisition times (ca. 1h) and enhanced surface sensitivities. They may be especially useful in future depth-deconvolution efforts.