Influence of the chemical environment on the Si KL x-ray satellite spectra of transition metal silicides bombarded by 43 MeV Ne ions

Abstract

We report on the study of heavy-ion-induced Si KL x-ray satellite spectra of several 3d, 4d and 5d silicides, with the aim of elucidating the trends in bonding properties of transition metal (TM) silicides. Measurements of the 43 MeV Ne 3+ -beam-induced Si KL spectra of elemental silicon and compound targets were performed at the Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen, Switzerland, with a high-resolution von Hamos crystal spectrometer. The interpretation of the data was based on the importance of the effect of the solid and chemical environment on the KL x-ray satellite relative intensities due to the L-vacancy refilling by intra-and inter-atomic electron transitions. Within the framework of a statistical procedure for L-shell vacancy refilling the average L-shell rearrangement probability for each silicide was extracted so that calculated x-ray intensity distributions matched the experimental ones. The results are discussed in terms of the interplay of Si-Si, Si-TM and TM-TM bonding interactions in the studied TM silicides.

K-shell spectroscopy of silicon ions as diagnostic for high electric fields

“…Excited-state satellites of Si(VI) may be present if the bulk electron temperature is sufficiently high ( 10eV), however, their energies lie in the "blue" part of the spectrum, close to the next-charge-state Si(VII) Kα transition, 18 again not affecting the sensitivity of the method. Finally, minor energy shifts (∼1eV) due to the chemical composition, 19 which should be considered, since we use silicon monoxide instead of the atomic silicon assumed in the calculations, are negligible as well.…”

High-resolution XES and RIXS studies with a von Hamos Bragg crystal spectrometer

“…Thanks to the versatility of this X-ray spectrometer, measurements of X-ray emission spec-tra using an electron gun or a conventional X-ray source, as well as at charged particle and X-ray synchrotron beamlines are feasible. Ample data have been collected with this instrument over the last years in different areas of research in atomic physics and for the metrology of X-ray transitions (see, e.g., [3][4][5][6]). Access to X-ray synchrotron radiation facilities providing intense and tunable monochromatic X-ray beams has incited new research projects.…”