Mass transport on adsorbate multilayers studied by surface plasmon polariton wave excitation

We excited surface-plasmon polariton waves (SPPW) on Cu(111) by coupling a monochromatic optical beam with a xenon multilayer thickness grating on the metal. The SPPW excitation was detected with an angle-resolved oblique-incidence reflectivity difference technique (OI-RD). The amplitude of the resonance OI-RD signal was a quadratic function of the grating modulation depth. By monitoring the decay of the resonance OI-RD signal as a function of time and temperature, we were able to study the mass transport of xenon that plays a key role in the annealing of a “rough” Xe multilayer crystalline film.