Manganese adlayers on i-Al-Pd-Mn quasicrystal: growth and electronic structure

Pseudomorphic growth of thin elemental metal films is often observed on a variety of crystalline solids. On quasicrystalline surfaces with their complex structure and the absence of translational periodicity, the situation is different since elemental metals do not exhibit quasicrystalline order, and hence the specific interaction between overlayer and substrate is decisive. Here we study the growth of manganese films on an icosahedral i-Al-Pd-Mn alloy with a view to establishing the growth mode and electronic structure. Although we observe an exponential intensity variation of the adlayer and substrate related x-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) peaks, low energy electron diffraction (LEED) shows that Mn adlayers do not exhibit quasicrystallinity. The detailed structure of the Mn 2p core level line reveals considerable electronic structure differences between the quasicrystalline and elemental metal environment. Evidence of a substantial local magnetic moment on the Mn atoms in the overlayer (about 2.8  µ(B)) is obtained from the Mn 3s exchange splitting.