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H. Lüth, Surfaces and Interfaces of Solids
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1993
at least neglect the influence of the gas phase or of adsorbed contaminants.
The surface, of course, has to be prepared as a fresh, clean surface within
such a vacuum. Most of the remainder of this chapter is concerned with
several methods for preparing clean, "virgin-like" crystalline surfaces in_
vacuum. Here we want to make a simple estimate of how good the vacuurtJ.
must be, to ensure stable, well-defined conditions for experiments on such
a freshly prepared surface.
The ambient pressure p determines how many particles of the residual
gas impinge on a surface area of I cm2 per second (impinging rate: z
[cm- 2·S-l]) through the relation
p = 2m{v)z . (2.1)
Here m is the mass of the gas atoms or molecules, and (v) is their average
thermal velocity with
(2.2)
p ~ 6kTz/{v) . (2.3)
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