Vibrational excitation of NO scattered from Cu(110)

The vibrational excitation of nitric oxide (NO) has been observed in molecular beam scattering from Cu(110). The degree of vibrational excitation increases exponentially with increasing surface temperature and depends linearly on the incident translational energy. The scattered rotational state distribution in both NO(v=0) and NO(v=1) depends strongly on the incident translational energy and weakly on the surface temperature which is indicative of direct inelastic scattering. If only mechanical forms of energy transfer between the molecule and the surface are considered, vibrational excitation of the molecules is unlikely. The exponential surface temperature dependence observed could be an indication of electronically mediated energy transfer. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.