Yu S-W, Carpenter M H, Ponce F, Friedrich S, Lee J-S
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94550, USA.
J Phys Condens Matter. 2015 Oct 14;27(40):405501. doi: 10.1088/0953-8984/27/40/405501. Epub 2015 Sep 24.
We have studied the excited electronic structure of LaBr3(Ce) scintillator by soft x-ray spectroscopy such as x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and x-ray emission spectroscopy (XES). The La 3d XAS and XES spectra of LaBr3(Ce) are compared with those of other La(3+) solids (LaF3, La2O3, and La metal). From this comparison, it turns out that the La 3d XAS and XES spectra from all the La(3+) solids considered here appear at almost the same energy, even though the corresponding binding energies of the 3d core holes determined by XPS (x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy) are very different. As a result, we argue that the atomic nature of the 3d⁹4f¹ configuration created by 3d¹⁰4f⁰ → 3d⁹4f¹ x-ray absorption process in La(3+) solids is maintained via the localized 4 f (1) state, which screens the 3d core holes differently from one La(3+) solid to another.
