J. Rittmann

Coordination-driven magnetic-to-nonmagnetic transition in manganese-doped silicon clusters

The interaction of a single manganese impurity with silicon is analyzed in a combined experimental and theoretical study of the electronic, magnetic, and structural properties of manganese-doped silicon clusters. The structural transition from exohedral to endohedral doping coincides with a quenching of high-spin states. For all geometric structures investigated, we find a similar dependence of the magnetic moment on the manganese coordination number and nearest neighbor distance. This observation can be generalized to manganese point defects in bulk silicon, whose magnetic moments fall within the observed magnetic-to-nonmagnetic transition, and which therefore react very sensitively to changes in the local geometry. The results indicate that high spin states in manganese-doped silicon could be stabilized by an appropriate lattice expansion.

X-ray spectroscopy on size-selected clusters in an ion trap: from the molecular limit to bulk properties

An experiment was designed to perform x-ray and VUV spectroscopy on size-selected clusters in the gas phase. Using a radio frequency ion trap and a quadrupole mass filter combined with an intense magnetron sputter source made it possible to record x-ray absorption spectra of mass-selected clusters in ion yield mode. These measurements clearly reveal the development from richly structured atomic spectra to bulk-like line shapes in transition metal clusters.