Electrons Trapped in Solid Neon–Hydrogen Mixtures Below \(1\, \hbox {K}\)

Journal of Low Temperature Physics https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-018-02135-w Electrons Trapped in Solid Neon–Hydrogen Mixtures Below 1K S. Sheludiakov1,2 · J. Ahokas1 · J. Järvinen1 · L. Lehtonen1 · S. Vasiliev1 Yu. A. Dmitriev3 · D. M. Lee2 · V. V. Khmelenko2 · Received: 16 July 2018 / Accepted: 17 December 2018 © The Author(s) 2018 Abstract We report on an electron spin resonance study of electrons stabilized in solid films of neon–hydrogen mixtures. We found that these films are highly porous and may absorb large amount of liquid helium. We observed that free electrons can be stabilized in two different positions: in a pure neon environment and in H2 clusters formed in the pores of solid neon. It turned out that the presence of the superfluid helium film suppresses the escape of the trapped electrons via diffusion through the pores and stimulates their accumulation in the H2 clusters even in Ne samples of the best available purity. We propose several possible explanations for this behavior. Keywords Matrix stabilization · Free electrons · Electron spin resonance 1 Introduction Matrix isolation is one of the most widespread and convenient techniques for stabilizing and investigating highly reactive species and radicals [1–3]. Being introduced into an inert solid matrix, these species become immobilized and remain stable at low enough temperatures where their diffusion is suppressed. A weak van-der-Waals inter- This work has been supported the Wihuri Foundation, by NSF Grant No. DMR 1707565 and ONR award N00014-16-1-3054. B S. Vasiliev S. Sheludiakov 1 Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Turku, 20014 Turku, Finland 2 Department of Physics and Astronomy, Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA 3 Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute, 26 Politekhnicheskaya, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation 194021 123 Journal of Low Temperature Physics action, low atomic polarizability and a large bandgap make solid neon a particularly suitable medium for conducting optical and electron spin resonance studies of such transient species. In contrast to atomic hydrogen, the smallest among the metastable radicals, which may occupy two different positions in a solid neon lattice [4–6], observation of electrons in a Ne matrix is far more difficult due to the large − 1.3 eV negative electron affinity of neon atoms [7]. However, exposure of solid neon samples to an electron beam is accompanied by a large yield of secondary electrons, which is  60 for each incident 1–3 keV primary electron [8]. The small atomic polarizability also makes solid neon films a promising substrate for stabilization of a high-density 2D electron gas [9]. However, only a partial wetting of surfaces below its triple point makes solid neon films highly disordered and porous [10,11]. The pairwise Ne–Ne interaction is nearly identical to that between Ne atoms and H2 molecules. This allows considering Ne and H2 solutions to be isotopic mixtures with an astonishingly large mass difference. As a result, the equilibrium solubility of H2 in solid neon at temperatures of order 1 K is limited to a fraction of percent while both Ne and H2 in solid non-equilibrium mixtures may form fcc and hcp structures depending on the H2 admixture [12,13]. In our recent study [6], we found that the solid neon with small (well below 6%) admixtures of hydrogen forms a highly porous solid with small clusters of pure H2 embedded inside the pores. We observed an exceptionally high recombination rate of H atoms in such H2 clusters upon raising the temperature to 0.3–0.6 K, which could be explained by a solid-liquid transition in the clusters. The possibility of such a transition was predicted earlier for solid H2 in a restricted geometry [14]. These results motivated us to explore other methods to study the properties of such hydrogen clusters formed inside solid Ne. In addition to the ESR signals of atomic hydrogen in the solid neon–hydrogen mixtures, we also detected two singlet lines from free electrons trapped inside the films. In the present work, these electrons serve as an additional probe of the sample porosity and the local distribution of molecular hydrogen in a solid neon matrix. We present here a detailed study of the behavior of electrons trapped in solid Ne matrices containing small admixtures of H2 . We found that depending on a H2 admixture, electrons may be trapped in two locations inside the neon matrix. In one such location, the electrons are surrounded mostly by pure neon and are probably trapped in the neon lattice near the surface of the pores. The electrons of the second type are located in the bulk of hydrogen clusters inside the pores. We found that condensing superfluid helium into the pores blocks the diffusion of these electrons from the pores and leads to a substantial growth of their concentration. 2 Experimental Setup The experimental setup is based on an Oxford 2000 dilution refrigerator which accommodates a sample cell (Fig. 1) and a 128 GHz ESR spectrometer [15]. The sample cell is placed in the center of a 4.6 T superconducting magnet and is attached to the mixing chamber of the dilution refrigerator to provide cooling. The main investigation tool in our experiments is a 128 GHz super-heterodyne ESR spectrometer which enables 123 Journal of Low Temperature Physics Fig. 1 The sample cell schematic simultaneous measurement of both the absorption and dispersion parts of the mm-wave susceptibility [16]. We will present only the absorption part throughout this article. The ESR resonator in the sample cell has an open Fabry–Perot design which also allows installation of the capillaries for condensing Ne:H2 mixtures and an auxiliary rf resonator (HNMR in Fig. 1). The bottom ESR resonator mirror also serves as the top electrode of a quartz microbalance (QM) which makes it possible to measure the ESR signals of species with unpaired electron spins and accurately determine the film thickness. The top electrode of the quartz microbalance is left floating which provides the possibility of applying an electric potential to the film substrate. The top ESR resonator mirror has a spherical shape and is made of oxygen-free polycrystalline copper. We used neon gas of 99.99% purity with a 100 ppm natural H2 admixture. The Ne:H2 mixtures were prepared at room temperature and the solid neon–hydrogen films were deposited onto the top electrode of the QM directly from a gas-handling system with a typical rate of 0.1 monolayers/s, resulting in the final thickness of 2.5 µm. The substrate temperature during the Ne:H2 film deposition was stabilized at temperature 0.7–1.3 K which was slightly different during preparation of different samples. Prior to that, a small amount of He gas ( ∼ mmol) was condensed into a chamber below the quartz microbalance in order to form a saturated helium film there. The superfluid film flushes the bottom QM surface (...truncated)