Inverse photoemission spectroscopy Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
Inverse photoemission spectroscopy injects an electron of known kinetic energy into a sample and detects the photon emitted as it enters an unoccupied electronic state. Conservation of energy, together with incident-angle information and an appropriate surface model, probes the unoccupied electronic band structure. Ordinary angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy instead removes electrons from occupied states.
inverse photoemission spectroscopy is appropriate: the fitted minimum lies above the Fermi level, so the state is unoccupied in equilibrium. Injection of electrons followed by photon emission probes unoccupied states. Ordinary ultraviolet photoemission removes electrons from occupied states and cannot map this empty minimum without an additional population mechanism.
Ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy probes occupied valence states through photoemitted electron energies. Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy adds emission direction and therefore parallel crystal momentum, revealing occupied band dispersions and Fermi contours. For a clean periodic surface, modulo a surface reciprocal-lattice vector. A two-dimensional surface band has no intrinsic perpendicular dispersion; varying photon energy helps distinguish it from bulk bands, while allowing for matrix-element changes. A simple surface-state example is a parabolic band .
Scanning tunneling spectroscopy measures local differential conductance. With a suitable featureless tip and weak tunneling, samples the local density of states, giving occupied and unoccupied features on opposite bias sides. It provides spatial localization, defects and standing-wave patterns, while ordinary spectroscopy at one point does not directly give the complete momentum-resolved band structure. For the parabolic two-dimensional band, the ideal density of states has a step at its onset, while spatial interference can supply information about allowed wavevectors. Inverse photoemission spectroscopy accesses unoccupied states by injecting electrons and measuring emitted photons. Optical absorption and electron energy loss spectroscopy instead probe allowed excitation energies and collective modes, with their own selection rules and momentum ranges. These methods supply complementary information; none automatically returns the full interacting band structure without matrix elements, resolution and surface effects.
For the Pt core-level spectra, electrons suffering inelastic losses emerge with reduced kinetic energy and appear at larger inferred binding energies. Loss tails and secondary-electron contributions therefore generate the background, principally on the high-binding-energy side of a core peak. The two clean-surface components correspond to different environments of the same Pt core-level branch. The stated values imply a surface core-level shift
Reduced coordination at a surface narrows the band. In a simple almost-filled-band picture, maintaining its occupation moves the band center upward relative to the Fermi level; associated local-potential changes can move core levels upward too, reducing their binding energy. This is a plausible initial-state explanation of the negative shift. Final-state screening of the core hole also matters, so the measured shift alone does not uniquely determine a local charge or separate these mechanisms.
After adsorption, Pt atoms directly bonded to CO have a different local potential, hybridization and core-hole screening. In carbon monoxide adsorption on platinum, carbon-end donation and metal-to-molecule back-donation change the Pt–CO bond and hence the Pt core binding energy. The additional weak high-binding-energy component is naturally assigned to these chemically modified surface Pt atoms. Its small weight is compatible with only a minority of surface sites being occupied; a quantitative coverage estimate requires fitted areas and appropriate attenuation assumptions.
The new component is centered at approximately – in the supplied plot. Relative to bare surface Pt at , the core-level chemical shift is therefore
Using the bulk peak as the reference would instead give about –, which answers a different comparison. The plotted axis runs toward decreasing binding energy to the right, so the additional peak on its left is a positive binding-energy shift. The estimate is a graphical reading, with no claim to sub-tenth-eV precision or a unique charge-transfer value.
Different measurements reveal different aspects of electronic band structure; a convincing determination combines their constraints.
Angle-resolved photoemission. In angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, photons of known energy eject occupied electrons. Measuring their kinetic energy and emission angle reconstructs binding energy and the component of crystal momentum parallel to the surface:
Here is the sample work function when kinetic energy is referenced to the nearby vacuum; an analyzer energy scale requires its own work-function calibration. Momentum is conserved modulo a surface reciprocal lattice vector, neglecting photon momentum. Tracking the peaks maps occupied dispersion relations and the Fermi surface. The measured intensity also contains the matrix element, the Fermi-Dirac distribution and the spectral function, so an absent bright feature does not establish an absent band. For a three-dimensional solid, the perpendicular momentum requires a final-state model. Inverse photoemission spectroscopy probes unoccupied states by injecting electrons and detecting emitted photons.
Optical spectroscopy. Photon absorption and ellipsometry measure interband transitions, optical selection rules and the complex dielectric response. Because optical photon momentum is small on the scale of the Brillouin zone, direct transitions approximately preserve crystal momentum. Their onset constrains a direct band gap; a threshold involving a phonon can reveal an indirect band gap. Peak positions constrain energy differences between bands, but the response also depends on the joint density of states and optical matrix elements, so it does not uniquely determine every .
Quantum oscillations and cyclotron resonance. In clean samples at low temperature, the de Haas-van Alphen effect measures oscillations in magnetization and the Shubnikov-de Haas effect measures oscillations in electrical resistivity as the inverse magnetic field is varied. Their period in inverse magnetic field is , where Onsager quantization relates to an extremal Fermi-surface area perpendicular to the field:
Rotating the magnetic field maps the geometry of extremal orbits. The thermal damping determines the cyclotron effective mass,
with the appropriate magnitude for a hole orbit. Cyclotron resonance supplies the corresponding dynamical mass through . These are detailed probes near the Fermi level, rather than measurements of all occupied bands. Diffraction supplies the reciprocal lattice needed to label the measured momenta, but diffraction by itself is not a measurement of electronic dispersion.