Resonant soft X-ray emission spectroscopy of doped and undoped vanadium oxides

Abstract

Resonant soft X-ray emission (RSXE) spectra of NaV 2O 5, Mo x V 1− x O 2 and V 2O 3 have been recorded for a series of excitation energies at resonances of the V L- and O K-absorption band. Resonant excitation allows us, firstly, to separate V 3d and O 2p projected density-of-states of the valence band and, secondly, to study charge-neutral low-energy excitations due to resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS). We found that both the V L- and the O K-emission spectra clearly show components originating from O 2p- and V 3d-states, reflecting the high degree of hybridization of the valence band in all compounds. At threshold excitation we observed that NaV 2O 5 spectra are dominated by RIXS whereas Mo x V 1− x O 2 and V 2O 3 spectra show bandlike features, which may be due to differences in the correlation effects of the compounds. We compared the RSXE spectra with cluster model calculations, which gives a good account for NaV 2O 5 whereas the RSXE spectra of the other compounds show RIXS only at certain energies well above the threshold. In fact, we interpret the trend in the RSXE spectra of the Mo x V 1− x O 2 compound system as a successive filling of the (rigid) V 3d band with increasing Mo content.