Chemical effects on the Kβ^″ and Kβ_2,5 x-ray lines of titanium and its compounds

High-resolution Kβ x-ray spectra induced by 2 MeV protons in thick Ti, TiO, Ti₂O₃, TiO₂, MgTiO₃, FeTiO₃, TiC, TiN, and TiB₂ targets were measured using a wavelength dispersive spectrometer combined with a position-sensitive detector. The intensities and energies of the Kβ_2,5 and Kβ^″ lines relative to the Kβ_1,3 line were extracted. The influence of self-absorption in thick targets was investigated using related x-ray-absorption near-edge-structure spectra that are available in the literature to extract mass absorption coefficients close to the K absorption edge. The correlation of the relative position of the Kβ_2,5 line with a titanium formal oxidation state in oxide compounds confirmed that the oxidation state of Ti in FeTiO₃ is probably a mixture of Ti III and Ti IV states, which has been recently reported by other authors using different methods. The strengths of the Kβ_2,5 and Kβ^″ transition probabilities per titanium-ligand pair were found to decrease exponentially as the average titanium-ligand bond distance increased, which is similar to results obtained for various compounds with vanadium or manganese as the central 3d metal atoms.