Dear all,

I have a (hopefully) quick question about calculating oxidation state of CeO2 at the L3 edge.

When calculating ox state by taking the ratio of peak areas, is the pre-edge feature for Ce included in this calculation? This point isn't clear to me from looking at various papers.

I've attached an image from Bernardi 2015, which shows that the %Ce III calculation doesn't include the fitted pre-edge feature A. I'm not sure why this would not be included? Is this because we only consider 2p > 5d transitions and the pre-edge is 2p > 4f (forbidden) transition?

Thanks!

Stephanie