Scattered rare metals

Reference has been made earlier to scattered rare metals, the five most important members of this particular group being gallium, indium, thallium, rhenium, and germanium. A common feature of these metals is that they do not form commercially significant mineral sources of their own, but are invariably produced from the processing of other mineral sources. The description given here pertains to rhenium, and serves as one example of these dispersed metals. 

This theory, which is basically a weak-scattering theory, should not be expected to be directly applicable to the liquid rare-earth metals, since these clearly show evidence of strong electron-ion interactions (e.g. tends to be quite large for these liquids). On the other hand, because of its considerable success in describing the properties of many simple liquid metals, it is not surprising that it has provided some basis on which to attempt to develop a theory for strong-scattering liquid metals as well. 

For example, energy transfer in molecule-surface collisions is best studied in nom-eactive systems, such as the scattering and trapping of rare-gas atoms or simple molecules at metal surfaces. We follow a similar approach below, discussing the dynamics of the different elementary processes separately. The surface must also be simplified compared to technologically relevant systems. To develop a detailed understanding, we must know exactly what the surface looks like and of what it is composed. This requires the use of surface science tools (section B 1.19-26) to prepare very well-characterized, atomically clean and ordered substrates on which reactions can be studied under ultrahigh vacuum conditions. The most accurate and specific experiments also employ molecular beam teclmiques, discussed in section B2.3. 

The usefulness of Eq. (3.41) depends crucially on whether or not the sensitivity factor rjA depends on the presence of other elements in the surface ( matrix effects ). It is an experimental finding that in general neutralization depends only on the atomic number of the scattering center, and matrix effects occur rarely. An instructive example is the neutralization of He by A1 in the pure metal and in alumina. The slopes of the neutralization curves turn out to be the same for both materials, i. e. matrix effects are absent [3.143]. This is a strong indication that in the neutralization process not only the valence/conduction electrons, but also atomic levels below the valence/ conduction band are involved. 

Ion-impact excitation has been widely studied in the rare gases260 270 and for alkali metal ion-atom collisions.271 280 In many cases excitation functions have been measured (i.e., total cross sections as a function of initial relative translational energy), and in some instances the angular dependencies of the differential cross sections for inelastic scattering have been determined. The most striking feature of the results from these experiments is the oscillatory structure that is evident in many of the... 

The aim of this chapter is to present a review of the high pressure optical studies on rare-earth ions in non-metallic compounds. Other methods, as for example neutron scattering, magnetic resonance techniques or MoBbauer spectroscopy will not be considered here, unless they provide additional valuable information to the optical studies. It will be demonstrated that the problem of host lattice structural dependence of 4f/v states can be effectively tackled by high pressure techniques and hopefully the interest for further, more refined high pressure studies of this problem can be stimulated. 

The interaction-energy curves for alkali metal-rare gas pairs are also of interest experimentally in scattering and radiation problems, and theoretically because of the expected reliability of the HF energy for this class of half-open-closed-shell systems. Calculations on LiHe and NaHe (X22+, A2U, if 22+) and their X1 + ions have been reported by Krauss et al.285 from R = 3 to 10 bohr. Both STO and GTO expansion bases were used, with comparable results except for the ASH state of NaHe. The variation of dipole and quadrupole moments with R was investigated. The X2S+ curve is... 

Crystal field levels in rare earth metals have been determined by measurements of properties such as (i) specific heat, (ii) Van Vleck susceptibility, (iii) magnetization in high magnetic fields, (iv) paramagnetic resonance, (v) Mossbauer effect, (vi) inelastic neutron scattering and (vii) miscellaneous methods. 

A third mechanism, first observed in gas-phase electron-impact scattering, has been referred to as negative-ion resonance. In this process, an electron is trapped, within 10 s, inside the molecule in a negative-ion state. For chemisorbed molecules, however, the adsorbate-substrate chemical bond and the electron-surface interactions can dramatically alter the resonance properties. Hence, for HREELS at metal surfaces, this mechanism is quite rare it will not be treated further in this article. 

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