LOCAL ELECTRONEGATIVITY AND CHEMICAL-SHIFT IN SI AND GE BASED MOLECULES AND ALLOYS

The present work discusses the correspondence existing between the chemical shift induced by a foreign atom in the core levels of Si and Ge and the impurity's electronegativity. To this aim, gaseous and solid Si and Ge based molecules and alloys with different atomic constituents were investigated. The chemical shifts of the Si 2p and of the Ge 3d core levels, as determined by X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), are shown to be proportional to the local electronegativity (according to Sanderson's scale). The chemical shift per bond has been also investigated in terms of the charge transferred between host and foreign atoms. The possibility of a new electronegativity scale based on electron charge transfer is discussed.