Abstract
Multiplet splittings in X-ray Photo-electron Spectroscopy, XPS, are a means of distinguishing different open shell occupations, or different oxidation states, in a material being studied. Indeed, especially for 3d transition metal complexes, they have provided fingerprints of the metal oxidation state. The present work provides theoretical and experimental evidence that it may also be possible to use multiplets to characterize the oxidation state of heavy metal, lanthanide and actinide, cations in complexes. However, it is important to make a proper choice of the XPS region to study in order to obtain large multiplet splittings. We identify a low binding energy, BE, peak that had been observed for Ce(III) in CeOx as a high spin coupled multiplet. Furthermore, we show that a low BE feature with reasonable intensity is characteristic of other XPS regions and of other metals. This feature arises from a high spin multiplet and serves as a fingerprint to distinguish closed shell from open shell cations. Evidence is presented that it may also be possible to distinguish different open shell occupations.
The plots of the 3d and 4d XPS of closed shell Ce4+ and open shell Ce3+ show the strong dependence of the multiplet structure on the charge state and on the core shell ionized. [Display omitted]
•Multiplet Splittings in heavy atom XPS.•Distinguish oxidation states from XPS.•Intermediate coupling of ionic states.