Surface core-level shifts

Note that in core-level photoelectron spectroscopy, it is often found that the surface atoms have a different binding energy than the bulk atoms. These are called surface core-level shifts (SCLS), and should not be confiised with intrinsic surface states. Au SCLS is observed because the atom is in a chemically different enviromuent than the bulk atoms, but the core-level state that is being monitored is one that is present in all of the atoms in the material. A surface state, on the other hand, exists only at the particular surface. 

M. Said, M. C. Desjonqudres and D. Spanjaard, Surface Core Level Shifts in BCC Transition Metals Deduced from Segregation Energy Calculation, Phys. Rev. B 47 4722 (1993)... 

G. Abramovici, M. C. Desjonqu res and D. Spanjaard, W Surface Core Levels Shifts of O/W(110) Deduced from Surface Segregation Energies, /. de Physique 15 907 (1995)... 

Shek ML, Stefan PM, Binns C, Lindau I, Spicer WE. 1982. Chemisorption-induced Pt 4/ surface core level shifts. Surf Sci 115 L81-L85. 

As mentioned earlier, the existence of surface shifted core levels has been questioned.6 Calculated results for TiC(lOO) using the full potential linearized augmented plane wave method (FLAPW) predicted6 no surface core level shift in the C Is level but a surface shift of about +0.05 eV for the Tis levels. The absence of a shift in the C Is level was attributed to a similar electrostatic potential for the surface and bulk atoms in TiC. The same result was predicted for TiN because its ionicity is close to that of TiC. This cast doubts on earlier interpretations of the surface states observed on the (100) surface of TiN and ZrN which were thought to be Tamm states (see references given in Reference 4), i.e. states pulled out of the bulk band by a shift in the surface layer potential. High resolution core level studies could possibly resolve this issue, since the presence of surface shifted C Is and N Is levels could imply an overall electrostatic shift in the surface potential, as suggested for the formation of the surface states. 

Figure 25.6 Differences in cohesive energies for nitrides of the 3d-, 4d- and 5d-series. These curves show the expected sign of the surface core level shift for (a) nitrogen and (b) metal...

The surface core level shift is defined as the shift in the core level binding energy for a surface atom relative to that of a bulk atom. Different theoretical approaches have been used to calculate surface shifts5,9 and for metals it has recently been shown21 that both initial- and final-state effects have to be included in ab initio calculations to obtain consistent agreement between experimental and calculated results. The basic assumption in this theoretical approach is that the final state is completely screened so the... 

This difference is taken for a compound in which the atoms of the element investigated (a Z-element) are changed to atoms of a Z + 1 element. The surface core level shift for the metal (M) and nonmetal (Y) level can then be expressed as,... 

Since most "surface-sensitive" techniques sample at least a few atomic planes into the sample, it is difficult to experimentally separate the electronic structure of the outermost plane of atoms from that of the planes below. Theoretical calculations are able to clearly separate surface from bulk electronic structure, of course it is common to calculate a separate electronic density-of-states for each plane in the crystal structure ("layer density-of-states"). Significant changes from the bulk electronic structure are sometimes found for the surface planes in calculations. However, it is difficult to confirm those results experimentally [1]. In some oxides, the bandgap at the surface has been observed to narrow compared to that of the bulk. The measured core-level binding energies of partially coordinated surface atoms are often shifted, by as much as an eV, from their bulk values [32] these are referred to as "surface core-level shifts". However, the experimental separation of surface from bulk electronic structure is at present far from satisfactory. 

Similar effects can also occur in surface electronic structure when a moiety is weakly physisorbed onto the surface. The surface core-level shifts measured at the vacuum interface are reduced when atoms or molecules are physisorbed onto the surface. Changes may also occur in the valence electronic structure upon physisorption, such as the disappearance of intrinsic surface states on metals and semiconductors. 

In most cases the experimental techniques used to study surface phenomena do not seem to yield consistent values for the surface segregation energies. One important exception is the special case of an atom of atomic number Z+1 in a host of atoms of atomic number Z, where the surface segregation energy may in fact be extracted with a high degree of accuracy from X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) measurements of surface core-level shifts (SCLS) [39]. In contrast they may be calculated quite accurately by modern first-principles methods [18,25,40]. 

Theoretical studies show that bimetallic bonding increases the stability of the Pd 4d valence band [14,23,34,36,40,90,98], The variation in surface core level shifts for metal overlayers is accompanied by a similar shift in the center of gravity of the admetal d band [34,40,90]. In the top panel of Figure 18 is shown the calculated density-of-states (DOS) at the Fermi level for a palladium monolayer on four different metal substrates. As one moves from Pd/Ru to Pd/Ta, there is a substantial... 

Another useful relationship, based on a Bom-Haber cycle similar to the one illustrated in Fig. 37, cormects surface core level shifts with the energy of surface segregation (section 3.6) [SOJoh, 83Ros]. Emitting a 4f7/2 core electron from a surface and bulk Pt atom, for example, creates a Au surface and Au... 

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