Pairing interactions and Gibbs adsorption at the liquid bi-in surface: a resonant X-ray reflectivity study

Phys Rev Lett. 2001 Feb 19;86(8):1538-41. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.86.1538.

Abstract

Resonant x-ray reflectivity measurements from the surface of liquid Bi(22)In(78) find only a modest surface Bi enhancement, with 35 at. % Bi in the first atomic layer. This is in contrast to the Gibbs adsorption in all liquid alloys studied to date, which show surface segregation of a complete monolayer of the low surface tension component. This suggests that surface adsorption in Bi-In is dominated by attractive interactions that increase the number of Bi-In neighbors at the surface. These are the first measurements in which resonant x-ray scattering has been used to quantify compositional changes induced at a liquid alloy surface.