Chemical bonding and electronic structures of microcline, orthoclase and the plagioclase series by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy

•XPS showed the effect of symmetry on Si 2p and Al 2p for microcline and orthoclase.•XPS showed the effect of coupled substitution on Si 2p, Al 2p and O 1s in plagioclase.•The Si 2p, Al 2p and O 1s binding energies decrease from albite to anorthite.•The bonding character for microcline is more covalent than Al2O3 but less than SiO2.•Plagioclase shows two distinct bonding characters comparable to SiO2 and Al2O3.

A detailed analysis was undertaken of the X-ray photoelectron spectra obtained from microcline, orthoclase and several samples of plagioclase with varying Na/Ca ratio. Comparison of the spectra was made based on the chemical bonding and structural differences in the Al- and Si-coordination within each specimen. The spectra for Si 2p and Al 2p vary with the change in symmetry between microcline and orthoclase, while in plagioclase an increase in Al–O–Si linkages results in a small but observable decrease in binding energy. The overall shapes of the O 1s peaks observed in all spectra are similar and show shifts similar to those observed for Si 2p and Al 2p. The lower-VB spectra for microcline and orthoclase are similar intermediate between α-SiO2 and α-Al2O3 in terms of binding energies. In the plagioclase series increasing coupled substitution of Na and Si for Ca and Al results in a change of the overall shape of the spectra, showing a distinct broadening associated with the presence of two separate but overlapping bands similar to the 21 eV band observed for quartz and the 23 eV band observed for corundum. The bonding character for microcline and orthoclase is more covalent than that of α-Al2O3, but less than that of α-SiO2. In contrast, the plagioclase samples show two distinct bonding characters that are comparable with those of α-SiO2 and α-Al2O3.

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