Splitting of valence levels in Ag-Au alloys

The splittings of the Au 5d and Ag 4d bands are reduced only slightly when the concentration of either metal is reduced from 100% to 25% in Ag-Au alloys. This observation is consistent with the fact that both crystal-field and banding effects are slightly changed by the alloying process. The experiments seem to show little or no evidence for the d-band repulsion narrowing usually observed in d-metal alloys, as the d-band peaks maintain their positions with varying concentrations of the constituents. This fact results in part from cancellation of d-band repulsions from different directions and in part from shifts caused by different s-d rehybridizations at the constituents' sites.