Robert E. Johnson
Professor Emeritus
About
I study ion, electron, and photon interactions with surfaces of low-temperature condensed-gas solids and biomolecular solids and with atmospheric gases. The principal processes studied are the ejection of molecules from the surface, called desorption or sputtering, and atomic collision cross sections. The applications are to surfaces and atmospheres of objects in the outer solar system or the interstellar medium, in order to understand the ambient gas or plasma observed, and samples of biomolecules, in order to produce a source of gas-phase biomolecules for studies in molecular biology.