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Updated: Oct 29, 2025
Gold Nanoparticle Synthesis
Published on: July 10, 2021
Free silver nanoparticles doped by potassium: Work-function change in experiment and theory
Mikko-Heikki Mikkelä1, Kari Jänkälä2, Marko Huttula2
1MAX-IV Laboratory, Lund University, P.O. Box 118, 22100 Lund, Sweden.
Abstract:
The composition-dependent change in the work-function (WF) of binary silver-potassium nanoparticles has been studied experimentally by synchrotron-based x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (PES) and theoretically using a microscopic jellium model of metals. The Ag-K particles with different K fractions were produced by letting a beam of preformed Ag particles pass through a volume with K vapor. The PES on a beam of individual non-supported Ag-K nanoparticles created in this way allowed a direct absolute measurement of their WF, avoiding several usual shortcomings of the method. Experimentally, the WF has been found to be very sensitive to K concentration: Already at low exposure, it decreased down to ≈2 eV-below the value of pure K. In the jellium modeling, considered for Ag-K nanoparticles, two principally different adsorption patterns were tested: without and with K diffusion. The experimental and calculation results together suggest that only efficient surface alloying of two metals, whose immiscibility was long-term textbook knowledge, could lead to the observed WF values.
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