Angle-scanned photoelectron diffraction

A brief survey is given on the current state-of-the-art of this surface structural technique based on photoelectron spectroscopy, with particular emphasis on the progress that has been made recently by routinely measuring full-hemispherical intensity distributions. We limit the discussion to the photoelectron forward focusing regime, which is attained at electron kinetic energies of a few hundred eV. Surface bond directions are directly revealed as pronounced maxima in the angular distributions from subsurface atoms, while characteristic interference features are observed for surface species. For both cases the dependence on the atomic type is weak enough so that these features provide a fingerprint of the local bonding geometry. For surface and near-surface species, this may then serve as a starting point for a structure refinement using single-scattering cluster calculations. Selected examples are given for illustrating these procedures.