Soft X-ray spectroscopy study of the electronic structure of hydrogenated Ti–Ni–Zr quasicrystal

Investigation of the electronic structure of a material is useful to understand its properties. For such a purpose, it is interesting to use spectroscopic techniques that allow for direct insight into the electronic distributions of a solid. X-ray emission and photoabsorption spectroscopies are especially attractive as they probe separately occupied and unoccupied states of selected angular momentum around each component of an alloy or a compound. In the present work we used these techniques to analyze the nature of the interaction between H and Zr, Ni and Ti. We studied occupied d and unoccupied p and s, d states in hydrogenated icosahedral Zr–Ni–Ti as compared to the non-hydrogenated quasicrystal and the pure elements. We present here first results. The spectral curves for Zr 4d occupied states show additional states, induced by the hybridization with H. The same is observed for Ni 3d states although the spectroscopic signature of the H-metal interaction is of lower intensity than for Zr. In the unoccupied states, changes of the shapes of the various spectral curves for Zr as well as Ni and Ti display significant modifications which we attribute to changes in hybridizations owing to the interaction with H.