Decades Old Mystery Solved: A “New Kind of Electrons”

[We Never Know]

Interesting.

Why do certain materials emit electrons with a very specific energy? This has been a mystery for decades — scientists at TU Wien have found an answer.

Decades Old Mystery Solved: A “New Kind of Electrons”

 

[Polymath257]

The title is somewhat misleading, but it's an interesting article.

 

[shunyadragon]

The title is somewhat misleading, but it's an interesting article.

ScitechDaily is usually very good, but I think some of their writers take editorial liberties, and are misleading. I believe it describes a particular electron behavior under certain conditions.

 

[Subduction Zone]

ScitechDaily is usually very good, but I think some of their writers take editorial liberties, and are misleading. I believe it describes a particular electron behavior under certain conditions.

Quite often the title of an article is not written by the author. An editor will make up a title with more punch. Those titles are often wrong.

 

[exchemist]

The title is somewhat misleading, but it's an interesting article.

The abstract seems to indicate it is about plasmons, I assume arising in the network of conjugated π -electrons in each graphite layer (?). It mentions that exciting plasmons leads to states in which they acquire some σ* (i.e. σ antibonding) character - hence the reference to "hybridisation" - which obviously alters the symmetry of the state.

I don't remember nearly enough to follow how this leads to emission of electrons, though. They don't say these are Auger electrons and there is no mention of an X-ray source, so I am wondering what they use to excite these plasmons. Without knowing that I can't really work out what is going on.

But the title is nonsense, of course. These are plain old vanilla electrons: there is no other sort. The discovery is the mechanism by which they are emitted from graphite, when stimulated by whatever process it is they use.

 

[Polymath257]

ScitechDaily is usually very good, but I think some of their writers take editorial liberties, and are misleading. I believe it describes a particular electron behavior under certain conditions.

Exactly.