Survival of noble gas clusters scattering from hot metal surfaces

We present classical trajectory calculations of Ar-n (n = 1000-4000) colliding with a hot Pd(111) surface. Large cluster fragments are found to survive a surface collision, and the fraction of atoms remaining in the fragment is concluded to increase with initial cluster size and surface temperature, and decrease with incident velocity above 100 m/s. Up to 52% of the initial cluster is found to survive as one unit in the most favorable case of Ar-4000 scattering from a surface at 1500 K. The implications of the results for new experimental investigations are discussed.