Soft-Landing Ion Deposition of Isolated Radioactive Probe Atoms on Surfaces: A Novel Method

We present a method to deposit a wide range of radioactive probe atoms on surfaces, without introducing lattice damage or contaminating the surface with other elements or isotopes. In this method, the probe atoms are mass separated using an isotope separator, decelerated to 5 eV, and directly deposited on the surface. The method allows for performing hyperfine interactions experiments using trace amounts of radioactive probes located at surfaces and interfaces. The characteristics of the deposition method were studied by performing perturbed angular correlation experiments on the system In on Cu(17,1,1). The results are in agreement with molecular dynamics simulations of the deposition process. The potential of this novel technique is briefly discussed.