LAUSR

Abstract Studying the initial stages of surface oxidation is of great relevance to understand how oxygen alters the physical and chemical properties at the interface of the host material to the environment and is therefore, crucial for improvement in manifold technological applications. We investigated the influence of surface oxygen on ion spectra recorded for keV noble gas ions backscattered from metal surfaces in low energy ion scattering (LEIS). Initially pure Zn and Ta surfaces, chosen for their well-characterized properties in ion-neutralization in LEIS, have been oxidized and ion spectra for pure and oxidized surfaces have been compared. Oxygen on the surface significantly influences shape and intensity of the backscattered ion spectrum at all energies: for both metal systems, the surface scattered ion yield of the metal is drastically decreasing under oxygen presence. The observed decrease, however, cannot be explained by the reduction in the surface areal density of the metal constituents exclusively. At least for Zn an additional significant change in charge exchange behavior is necessary to explain the observations. In contrast to the generally observed decrease in the yield of ions scattered from the outermost surface, the change in shape and intensity of the reionization background are found to show opposing trends and different energy dependencies for Zn and Ta.