Vibrational excitation in molecule–surface collisions due to temporary negative molecular ion formation

Inelastic electron scattering from gaseous and physisorbed diatomic molecules results in greatly enhanced vibrational overtone excitation if the incident electron has the appropriate energy to form a shape-resonance-induced temporary negative molecular ion. It is proposed here that due to the image potential lowering of the electron affinity level of a diatomic molecule in interaction with a metal surface, somewhere outside the surface an incident molecule would find its affinity level degenerate with or lower than the substrate Fermi level at which point a substrate electron could hop onto the molecule, in analogy with gas phase harpooning processes. A negative molecular ion is thus formed which remains until the molecular ion reflects from the surface and the affinity level rises above the Fermi level, thus permitting reverse electron hopping back into the metal. The lifetime of the molecular ion can be controlled by varying both the kinetic energy of the incident molecule and also the substrate work function. In analogy with the electron scattering events, greatly enhanced vibrational excitation of overtones is expected in the molecules of the scattered beam. Induced fluorescence probing of the vibrational state distribution should then yield fundamental information pertaining to the dynamics of charge transfer reactions and nonadiabatic effects in molecule–surface interactions. A theory of this phenomenon is here presented together with the numerical consequences for a model system designed to simulate N2 or NO scattering from standard surface science metal surfaces.