Phys.org  May 7, 2024 The nature of enhanced photoemission in disordered and amorphous solids is an intriguing question. An international team of researchers (Russia, USA – UC Irvine) studied structural photoemission in heterogeneous cross-linked silicon glass, a material that represents an intermediate state between the amorphous and crystalline phases, characterized by a narrow distribution of structure sizes. The model system showed a clear dependence of photoemission on size and disorder across a broad range of energies. While phonon-assisted indirect optical transitions are insufficient to describe observable emissions, their experiments suggested these could be understood through electronic Raman scattering. They attributed […]