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Fluorescence Study of Iron Silicide Multilayer
These spectra, taken from crystalline silicon (lower spectra) and from an iron silicide layer in a magnetic multilayer material (upper spectra), demonstrate the metallic nature of the iron silicide. High fluorescence yields indicate the presence of occupied states (blue) and unoccupied states (red). Whereas crystalline silicon shows a band gap between occupied and unoccupied states, indicating that it is a semiconductor, the spectra for the iron silicide layer overlap with no band gap, showing that the iron silicide is a metal. States at the Fermi energy of a solid are equally likely to be occupied or unoccupied.
Spectra for occupied states were measured using soft-x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (SXF). Spectra for unoccupied states were measured using fluorescence-yield near-edge x-ray absorption spectroscopy (NEXAFS). This experiment involved researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the University of Tennessee, and Tulane University, using the Tennessee-Tulane spectrometer at Beamline 8.0 of the ALS.
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