We present evidence for a fundamentally new mechanism for impact-induced desorption, viz., core-hole Auger decay. We thereby explain why observed thresholds for electron-stimulated desorption (ESD) of positive ions (O⁺, OH⁺, and F⁺) from certain d-band metal oxides (TiO₂, V₂{O}₅$, and W${O}₃$) correlate in energy with the ionization potential of the highest-lying atomic core levels. We conclude that electron-stimulated desorption is in many interesting cases an atom-specific, valence-sensitive probe of surfaces.
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Knotek et al. (1978) studied this question.