Electronic band structure of beryllium oxide

The energy–momentum resolved valence band structure of beryllium oxide has been measured by electron momentum spectroscopy (EMS). Band dispersions, bandwidths and intervalence bandgap, electron momentum density (EMD) and density of occupied states have been extracted from the EMS data. The experimental results are compared with band structure calculations performed within the full potential linear muffin-tin orbital approximation. Our experimental bandwidths of 2.1 ± 0.2 and 4.8 ± 0.3 eV for the oxygen s and p bands, respectively, are in accord with theoretical predictions, as is the s-band EMD after background subtraction. Contrary to the calculations, however, the measured p-band EMD shows large intensity at the Γ point. The measured full valence bandwidth of 19.4 ± 0.3 eV is at least 1.4 eV larger than the theory. The experiment also finds a significantly higher value for the p-to-s-band EMD ratio in a broad momentum range compared to the theory.