Calculations of the energy accommodation coefficient for gas-surface interactions

Calculations are carried out for the energy accommodation coefficient at a gas-surface interface using a recently developed classical mechanical theory of atom-surface collisions that includes both direct scattering and trapping-desorption processes in the physisorption well of the interaction potential. Full three-dimensional calculations are compared with the available data for the accommodation of rare gases at a tungsten surface and reasonable agreement is found for the heavier gases for which classical physics is expected to be valid at all measured temperatures. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.