Scattering of slow ions from insulator surfaces at the example of molecular oxygen from LiF(1 0 0)

We scattered molecular oxygen ions at grazing incidence from a LiF(1 0 0) surface in the energy range from 880 to 3040 eV. About 50% molecular survival was obtained at the lowest primary energy of 881 eV and this dropped to about 4% at 3039 eV. Below 2 keV beam energy we found negative ion fractions of less than 2%, which increases up to 6% at about 3 keV primary energy. The molecular survival is much higher whereas the negative ion fraction is much lower compared to other insulating materials, i.e. diamond and MgO. The mean energy loss is found to increase linearly with energy and is in the order of a few percent