Photoemission from small metal clusters

Recent experiments by Citrin and coworkers (41) have clarified the role of the support in photoemission from small metal clusters. They condensed several monolayers of krypton onto either platinum or sodium metal substrates. By varying the thickness of the krypton from one to ten monolayers, the surface could be converted from metal to semimetal to insulator. The krypton peak position provides a direct measure of the sample vacuum level (32). The krypton layers are thin, less than 10 monolayers, so that the vacuum level is determined by the metal substrate. Onto the krypton layers, sodium clusters were deposited at varying coverages. Shifts in the Kr 4s and Na 2p binding energies were recorded relative to the Fermi level of the grounded substrate. 

As was mentioned previously, photoemission has proved to be a valuable tool for measurement of the electronic structure of metal cluster particles. The information measured includes mapping the cluster DOS, ionization threshold, core-level positions, and adsorbate structure. These studies have been directed mainly toward elucidation of the convergence of these electronic properties towards their bulk analogues. Although we will explore several studies in detail, we can say that studies from different laboratories support the view that particles of 150 atoms or more are required to attain nearly bulk-like photoemission properties of transition and noble metal clusters. This result is probably one of the most firmly established findings in the area of small particles. 

Fig. 2. Photoemission from a transition metal (e.g., Pd) in the state of a bulk crystal (top) or as a small cluster on a support (bottom). Comparison with photoemission of the same metal when dissolved in a matrix of a Group IB metal (middle).

The techniques that have been most employed for investigating the electronic properties of small particles are photoemission (UPS, XPS), soft X-ray spectroscopy, EXAFS, photoionization mass spectrometry, and AES (23, 111, 240, 257d,e). While there is some controversy from theoretical work about the minimum particle size required to give bulk properties—from 10 (258) to several hundred atoms (259)—there seems to be a consensus that a cluster of about ISO atoms or more is required to observe a photoemission spectrum similar to that of the corresponding bulk metal (23, 260). When other properties are considered (ionization potential, density of states, valence bandwidth, etc.), the agreement is less satisfactory between the results obtained with different techniques (23). 

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