Desorption kinetics

Abstract

After a short survey of desorption experiments we review the theory of phonon-mediated physisorption kinetics at low coverage within the master-equation approach of the cascade model. A simplified Kramers description is extracted. For finite coverage we review the mean-field theory of multilayer physisorption and discuss the predicted compensation effect on the desorption rates around monolayer coverage. We then look at flash desorption and thermalization and conclude with some remarks on photodesorption by resonant infrared-laser-molecular-vibrational coupling.