Identifying Electronic Doorway States in Secondary Electron Emission from Layered Materials
We investigate the secondary low-energy electron emission induced by inelastic electron scattering from graphene and layered materials thereof. By applying a coincidence detection of the primary scattered and the emitted secondary electron we unravel pronounced resonance features otherwise overshadowed by the largely structureless secondary electron energy distribution. Supported by density functional theory calculations we show that these structures are the signature of prominent resonances above the vacuum threshold which originate from interlayer states acting as a doorway state for electron emission. Remarkably, some of these doorway states open up only for samples with more than five layers.
Authors
- Joachim Burgdörfer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1479-2657)
- Florian Libisch (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5641-9458)
- Alessandra Bellissimo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8504-2848)
- Dieter Hofmann (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-2910-5394)
- Wolfgang Werner (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4870-9137)
- Péter Richter (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-1335-4228)
- Thomas Seyller (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4953-2142)
- Anna Niggas (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5838-5789)
- R. Wilhelm (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9451-5440)
- Florian Simperl (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-1935-103X)
- Johannes Kero
- Felix Blödorn (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-0924-9726)
- Maosheng Hao
- Melvin Cap
Institutions
- TU Wien (AT)
- Chemnitz University of Technology (DE)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Physical Review Letters
- Published
- 2025-10-15
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1103/qls7-tr4v
- Primary Topic
- Electron and X-Ray Spectroscopy Techniques
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00