Photoelectron diffraction

The use of core-level photoelectron diffraction for structural studies of surfaces and epitaxial overlayers is discussed. Photoelectron diffraction is found to provide several direct and rather unique types of structural information, including the sites and positions of adsorbed atoms; the orientations of small molecules or fragments bound to surfaces; the orientations, layer thicknesses, vertical lattice constants, and degrees of short-range order of epitaxial or partially-epitaxial overlayers; and the presence of short-range spin order in magnetic materials. Specific systems considered are the reaction of oxygen with Ni(001), the growth of epitaxial Cu on Ni(001), the well-defined test case S on Ni(001), and short-range spin order in the antiferromagnet KMnF 3 . A rather straightforward single scattering cluster (SSC) model also proves capable of quantitatively describing such data, particularly for near-surface species and with corrections for spherical-wave scattering effects and correlated vibrational motion. Promising new directions in such studies also include measurements with high angular resolution and the expanded use of synchrotron radiation.