Electron-hole pair creation at a Ge(100) surface by ground-state neutral Xe atoms

We have directly measured the excitation of electron-hole pairs at a crystal surface by ground-state neutral atoms. Utilizing seeded molecular beam techniques we have scattered hyperthermal (1--6 eV) Xe atoms from the (100) face of a Ge p-i-n diode and recorded the current transient induced due to the scattering process. We find the product of the excitation and collection probability to be approx.10-4 over a range of kinetic energies 2<E/sub Xe/(eV)<6. The excitation of electron-hole pairs constitutes a small portion of the massive energy loss (ΔE/Eapprox.70%) of the Xe atom to the crystal