Eur. Phys. J. B 43, 463-470 (2005)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2005-00079-5

Resonant valence-band photoemission spectroscopy on the Fe₆₂Ni₂₀Cr₁₈ alloy

¹ Istituto Nazionale di Fisica della Materia (INFM) and Dipartimento di Fisica, Università della Calabria, 87036 Rende-Cosenza
² TASC, INFM, Area di Ricerca, Basovizza, 34012 Trieste, Italy
³ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Trieste, Via Valerio 2, 34127 Trieste, Italy
⁴ Sincrotrone Trieste, Basovizza, 34012 Trieste, Italy

Corresponding author: ^a formoso@fis.unical.it

Received: 13 October 2003
Revised: 5 October 2004
Published online: 30 March 2005

Abstract

The Fe₆₂Ni₂₀Cr₁₈ valence band was studied by scanning the photon energy across the  core-level threshold of each element of the alloy. A resonant enhancement of the weak 3d-like features was observed. In pure transition metals, similar valence band resonances are explained by a radiation-less Raman de-excitation emission, which is active at threshold and degenerate with the two-hole satellite of direct photoemission. Present structures are associated to satellite features occurring in Fe₆₂Ni₂₀Cr₁₈, and their intensities and binding energies are compared to those of the pure metal components. The alloy satellite resonant behaviour reveals some peculiar modifications of: a) the crossover between the radiation-less Raman scattering and the Auger emission regimes; b) the ratio of the relative intensities of the main and satellite peaks. We mainly assign these differences to the hetero-nuclear bonds in the alloy.