Inverse photoemission spectroscopy

Inverse photoemission spectroscopy (IPES) is a surface science technique used to study the unoccupied electronic structure of surfaces, thin films, and adsorbates. A well-collimated beam of electrons of a well defined energy (< 20 eV) is directed at the sample. These electrons couple to high-lying unoccupied electronic states and decay to low-lying unoccupied states, with a subset of these transitions being radiative. The photons emitted in the decay process are detected and an energy spectrum, photon counts vs. incident electron energy, is generated. Due to the low energy of the incident electrons, their penetration depth is only a few atomic layers, making inverse photoemission a particularly surface sensitive technique. As inverse photoemission probes the electronic states above the Fermi level of the system, it is a complementary technique to photoemission spectroscopy.