High-resolution electron energy loss spectroscopy
(HREELS) is one of the most advanced analytic methods in surface science. This method covers
not only basically all relevant vibrational frequencies but it is also
sensitive to electronic excitations (plasmons, HOMO–LUMO excitations) and can thus
provide a bulk of valuable information about vibrational, geometric and
electronic properties of adsorbates on solid substrates (usually well-defined
metal or metal oxide single-crystal surfaces). Our HREELS system contains two chambers. The upper
chamber (also called preparation chamber) is equipped with a quadrupole mass
spectrometer (Pfeiffer, Prisma) for thermal desorption spectroscopy (TDS)
experiments, a metal evaporator for deposition of metal films, as well as with
facilities for low-energy electron diffraction (LEED) and surface cleaning by
Ar+ ion sputtering. The lower chamber houses an HREELS spectrometer (Delta
0.5, SPECS, Germany) with a straight-through energy resolution of 1 meV (8 cm-1).
The sample temperature can be changed from 90 K (cooled by liquid nitrogen) to
1000 K for metal oxide samples.
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