High Pressure Resonant X-ray Emission Studies of WO3 and Hydrogenated WO3

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

5-23-2017

Publication Title

Proceedings of 17th International Conference on High Pressure Semiconductor Physics & Workshop on High-pressure Study on Superconducting

Volume

6

First page number:

11102

Abstract

We performed two high pressure resonant X-ray emission experiments (RXES) on tungsten oxide (WO3), and a mixture of WO3 and ammonia borane (NH3BH3), respectively. In the first experiment, WO3 (confined by a Be gasket) was pressurized and RXES spectra were collected from ambient pressure up to 54.8 GPa via incident X-ray excitation of the W LIII line at 10.207 keV and collection of emission spectra from the Lα1 line near 8.398 keV. The spectra display significant alterations, in particular, a diminishment of one of the spectral lines with pressure suggesting some electronic state changes with pressure in WO3 which were largely reversible upon decompression of the sample to ambient pressure. For the second experiment, a powder mixture of WO3 and NH3BH3 was pressurized and irradiated to release H2. An RXES pattern was recorded at 4 GPa which displayed little difference between the RXES spectrum recorded of pure WO3 in the first experiment. However, at 10 GPa, a dramatic change occurred in the RXES spectrum suggesting that the H2 reacted with and/or intercalated into the WO3 lattice. These studies suggest the possibility of harnessing useful hard X-ray photochemistry as a novel means to dope semiconductors.

Language

english

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