Scattering of Diatomic and Polyatomic Molecules from the (111) Plane of Silver

The scattering of N 2 , O 2 , NO, CO, CO 2 , and CH 4 molecular beams from the (111) plane silver is studied experimentally. When compared with rare gases, the scattering lobe is found to shift toward the surface tangent at incident angles in the low and middle range, and to broaden at low incident energies. The broadness and the shift of the scattering lobe for diatomic gases are found to correlate with the unbalance of the pairing atoms in the diatomic molecule with respect to the mass or atomic size.