Effects of alloying on the band structure of gold: Piezoreflectance measurements on some AuCo and AuV alloys

Piezoreflectance measurements have been made on a series of gold cobalt and gold vanadium alloys with impurity concentrations of up to 4% using a strain amplitude of 4 × 10^?4 at a frequency of 68 kHz. The spectra show that the main interband transitions occur at 2.4, 3.5 and 4.5 eV. The deformation potentials with impurity concentration have been found for these transitions. An additional interband transition was found to occur at an energy of 1.8eV and this was enhanced significantly with impurity concentration. This may be due to the impurity causing a broadening of the d bands and hence a smearing of the interband threshold or alternatively it may be caused by a d band to Fermi level transition along the Δ direction close to the X point.