Femtosecond time-resolved small and wide-angle x-ray diffuse scattering techniques are applied to investigate the
ultrafast nucleation processes that occur during the ablation process in semiconducting materials. Following intense
optical excitation, a transient liquid state of high compressibility characterized by large-amplitude density fluctuations is
observed and the build-up of these fluctuations is measured in real-time. Small-angle scattering measurements reveal
the first steps in the nucleation of nanoscale voids below the surface of the semiconductor and support MD simulations
of the ablation process.
The melting dynamics of laser excited InSb have been studied with femtosecond x-ray diffraction. These measurements demonstrate that the initial stage of crystal disordering results from inertial motion on a laser softened potential energy surface. These inertial dynamics dominate for the first half picosecond following laser excitation, indicating that inter-atomic forces minimally influence atomic excursions from the equilibrium lattice positions, even for motions in excess of an Å. This also indicates that the atoms disorder initially without losing memory of their lattice reference.
Two-photon photoemission of thiolate/Ag(111), nitrile/Ag(111), and alcohol/Ag(111) interfaces elucidates electron solvation and localization in two dimensions. For low coverages of thiolates on Ag(111), the occupied (HOMO) and unoccupied (LUMO) electronic states of the sulfer-silver bond are localized due to the lattice gas structure of the adsorbate. As the coverage saturates and the adsorbate-adsorbate nearest neighbor distance decreases, the HOMO and LUMO delocalize across many adsorbate molecules. Alcohol- and nitrile-covered Ag(111) surfaces solvate excess image potential state (IPS) electrons. In the case of alcohol-covered surfaces, this solvation is due to a shift in the local workfunction of the surface. For two-monolayer coverages of nitriles/Ag(111), localization accompanies solvation of the IPS. The size of the localized electron can be estimated by Fourier transformation of the wavefunction from momentum- to position-space. The IPS electron localizes to 15 ± 4 angstroms full-width at half maximum in the plane of the surface, i.e., to a single lattice site.
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