Time-of-flight techniques for the investigation of kinetic energy distributions of ions and neutrals desorbed by core excitations

We present simple devices operating on the basis of mass spectrometers and time-of-flight techniques for the detection of kinetic energy distributions of neutrals and ions desorbed by photon excitation from adsorbates. We use data on photon stimulated desorption of O+ and O0 from chemisorbed monolayers of CO to demonstrate the capabilities of our instruments. Different trends of the kinetic energy distributions as a function of the photon energy are revealed for the two species and explained on the basis of previously obtained results. The future potential of the methods is discussed.