Preface
This book was motivated by the following questions that arose during the Third
International Conference on Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy and Spectroscopy
(STM/S) held in Beijing in 1993. These questions are ubiquitous and have become
increasingly important to the advancement of chemical and physical sciences:
(1) Can we probe the bonding network and the behaviour of electrons in various
energy levels from sites surrounding a point defect or an impurity, and in the
topmost atomic layer of a surface, to complement the STM/S signatures?
(2) How do electrons, atoms, and molecules perform in the energetic, spatial, and
temporal domains cooperatively when the reaction takes places?
(3) How does the bond-electron-phonon-property relax under multifield perturbation—
such as atomic irregular coordination, electrostatic polarization, mechanical activation, thermal excitation, and so on so forth?
(4) Can we distil the number fraction and stiffness of chemical bonds transiting from
the vibration mode of the reference to the conditioned states under physical
perturbation or chemical reaction?
As the basic means, diffraction crystallography, surface morphology, and electron
and phonon spectroscopies characterize the performance of atoms, electrons, and
molecules in the energetic, spatial, and temporal domains and their interactions.
Spectral signatures are related to the intrinsic performance of chemical bonds and
electrons in various energy levels or energy bands. Combined with the atomic-scale
STM and the low energy electron or X-ray diffraction (LEED, XRD), spectroscopies
of electrons and phonons reveal profound, quantitative information about the
relaxation of the local bond-electron-phonon that fosters intrinsically the chemical
and physical properties of the probed substance. However, it remains a challenge to
fully tap the capacity of the spectroscopies in probing desired information. The
conventionally well-adopted methods of spectral peak Gaussian-type decomposition
of a certain peak into multiple components or an empirical simulation to the spectral
peak evolution with external perturbation offer limited information, albeit hypothetic
parameters involved and the lack of spectral decomposition constraints. Therefore,
the presented electron and phonon spectrometrics for the intrinsic, local, dynamic,
ix
This book was motivated by the following questions that arose during the Third
International Conference on Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy and Spectroscopy
(STM/S) held in Beijing in 1993. These questions are ubiquitous and have become
increasingly important to the advancement of chemical and physical sciences:
(1) Can we probe the bonding network and the behaviour of electrons in various
energy levels from sites surrounding a point defect or an impurity, and in the
topmost atomic layer of a surface, to complement the STM/S signatures?
(2) How do electrons, atoms, and molecules perform in the energetic, spatial, and
temporal domains cooperatively when the reaction takes places?
(3) How does the bond-electron-phonon-property relax under multifield perturbation—
such as atomic irregular coordination, electrostatic polarization, mechanical activation, thermal excitation, and so on so forth?
(4) Can we distil the number fraction and stiffness of chemical bonds transiting from
the vibration mode of the reference to the conditioned states under physical
perturbation or chemical reaction?
As the basic means, diffraction crystallography, surface morphology, and electron
and phonon spectroscopies characterize the performance of atoms, electrons, and
molecules in the energetic, spatial, and temporal domains and their interactions.
Spectral signatures are related to the intrinsic performance of chemical bonds and
electrons in various energy levels or energy bands. Combined with the atomic-scale
STM and the low energy electron or X-ray diffraction (LEED, XRD), spectroscopies
of electrons and phonons reveal profound, quantitative information about the
relaxation of the local bond-electron-phonon that fosters intrinsically the chemical
and physical properties of the probed substance. However, it remains a challenge to
fully tap the capacity of the spectroscopies in probing desired information. The
conventionally well-adopted methods of spectral peak Gaussian-type decomposition
of a certain peak into multiple components or an empirical simulation to the spectral
peak evolution with external perturbation offer limited information, albeit hypothetic
parameters involved and the lack of spectral decomposition constraints. Therefore,
the presented electron and phonon spectrometrics for the intrinsic, local, dynamic,
ix