  A theoretical study is made on He scattering from three fundamental classes
of disordered ad-layers: (a) Translationally random adsorbates, (b) disordered
compact islands and (c) fractal submonolayers. The implications of the results
to experimental studies of He scattering from disordered surfaces are
discussed, and a combined experimental-theoretical study is made for Ag
submonolayers on Pt(111). Some of the main theoretical findings are: (1)
Structural aspects of the calculated intensities from translationally random
clusters were found to be strongly correlated with those of individual
clusters. (2) Low intensity Bragg interference peaks appear even for scattering
from very small ad-islands, and contain information on the ad-island local
electron structure. (3) For fractal islands, just as for islands with a
different structure, the off-specular intensity depends on the parameters of
the He/Ag interaction, and does not follow a universal power law as previously
proposed in the literature. In the experimental-theoretical study of Ag on
Pt(111), we use first experimental He scattering data from low-coverage (single
adsorbate) systems to determine an empirical He/Ag-Pt potential of good
quality. Then, we carry out He scattering calculations for high coverage and
compare with experiments. The conclusions are that the actual experimental
phase corresponds to small compact Ag clusters of narrow size distribution,
translationally disordered on the surface.
