The behaviour of the gold 5d band in Gold-Palladium alloys

The change of bandwidth and effective spin-orbit splitting of Gold 5d bands in a number of alloy systems has been found to be dependent only on the concentration of Gold and not on the second alloy constituent. Theoretically, this has been described as the split band limit where the Gold 5d electrons interact only weakly with electrons on the other component. The binding energy shifts are found to be dependent on this interaction. In this paper we report ultraviolet photoelectron spectra from a number of Gold-Palladium alloys and compare the d-band behaviour with that in previously reported spectra. In spite of the overlapping Gold and Palladium d bands the dominant interaction is that between like atoms. We also discuss the final state of dilute Gold in the Palladium matrix.