The deduction of continuously distributed activation energy site populations from tempering schedules

The desorption rate-temperature behaviour of adatoms from sites of unique desorption energy E, obeying first order rate reaction kinetics, is analysed for the case where temperature T is varied according to a general power law tempering function dT/dt=rpTp.

The analysis is then generalized to the case of adatoms initially populating sites of continuously distributed activation energy. It is shown, via several approximate and one more exact analysis, that the desorption rate-temperature function provides a close approximation to the initial population distribution. It is then demonstrated that use of both rapidly varying tempering functions and a variety of tempering functions, particularly the case of the exponential function p = 1, allows optimized determination of the initial population distribution.