Experiments to describe the band structure of bulk (solid) materials?

[AHolico]

Experiments to describe the band structure of bulk (solid) materials?

I just want to know the name of some of the most used techniques to describe or obtain information of how the band structure of the material is. Not by theorethical calculations, just experiments.

For example, let say I construct the following experiment. I put my sample on a heater and I put a fiber optic or a detector/photomultiplier to detect the photons that the material emits. Let say I have a good equipment that can diferentiate the photons by their energies, or wavelenghts. So in the end, by substracting the noise, the absence and the continuity of photon energy can tell me some information on how is the band structure of certain material. Right or wrong? If this technique already exist, how is it called?

 

[Mike H]

One technique that is quite prevalent is photoelectron spectroscopy (typically qualified with some sort of angular resolution involved in the experiment).

I somewhat remember doing an experiment as a wee undergrad where we did a band gap measurement for a diode by seeing how voltage and current varied with temperature, and then extracting out a band gap value. I vaguely recall that you can modify this sort of experiment depending on what you can measure and then appropriately plot and back calculate.

I also seem to recall seeing a number of various reflectance methods for measuring band gaps, but I am not familiar with them.

 

[ZapperZ]

Originally posted by AHolico
I just want to know the name of some of the most used techniques to describe or obtain information of how the band structure of the material is. Not by theorethical calculations, just experiments.

For example, let say I construct the following experiment. I put my sample on a heater and I put a fiber optic or a detector/photomultiplier to detect the photons that the material emits. Let say I have a good equipment that can diferentiate the photons by their energies, or wavelenghts. So in the end, by substracting the noise, the absence and the continuity of photon energy can tell me some information on how is the band structure of certain material. Right or wrong? If this technique already exist, how is it called?

One of the best technique at experimentally determining the band structure of the OCCUPIED side is angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). Such technique has been used to experimentally varify not only the band structure, but also the many-body effects on surface states of Be[1] and Mo[2]. This is especially true with the new technique of modern-day electron analyzer that allows for the simultaneous collection of both energy and momentum distribution of photoelectrons.[3] ARPES allows you to map the dispersion of each band (i.e the E vs. k values).

Zz.

[1] S. LaShell et al., PRB v.61, p.2371 (2000).
[2] T. Valla et al., PRL v.83, p.2085 (1999).
[3] T. Valla et al., Science v.285,p.2110 (1999).