Structure and electron–ion correlation of liquid germanium

• Published in: Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section B, Beam interactions with materials and atoms Vol. 238; no. 1-4; pp. 129 - 133
• Main Authors: Kawakita, Y., Fujita, S., Kohara, S., Ohshima, K., Fujii, H., Yokota, Y., Takeda, S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01-08-2005
• Subjects: Charge density; Germanium; Liquid; Structure; X-ray diffraction; 71.22.+i; Charge density; 61.20.−p; Liquid; 61.25.Mv; X-ray diffraction; Germanium; Structure; Ge; 61.10.−i
• ISSN: 0168-583X; 1872-9584
• DOI: 10.1016/j.nimb.2005.06.032

Structure factor of liquid germanium (Ge) has a shoulder at θ=3.2Å−1 in the high-momentum-transfer region of the first peak. To investigate the origin of such a non-simplicity in the structure, high energy X-ray diffraction measurements have been performed using 113.26keV incident X-ray, at BL04B2 beamline of SPring-8. By a combination of the obtained structure factor with the reported neutron diffraction data, charge density function and electron–ion partial structure factor have been deduced. The peak position of the charge distribution is located at about 1Å, rather smaller r value than the half value of nearest neighbor distance (∼2.7Å), which suggests that valence electrons of liquid Ge play a role of screening electrons around a metallic ion rather than covalently bonding electrons.