LEED intensities from clean and hydrogen covered Ni(100) and Pd(111) surfaces

Hydrogen adsorbs on Ni(100) and Pd(111) surfaces without the formation of additional diffraction spots in the LEED patterns. Measurements of LEED intensities revealed that adsorbed hydrogen layers cause considerable changes even in such cases where displacements of surface atoms (“reconstructive adsorption”) may be excluded. After hydrogen adsorption on Ni(100) the intensities of Bragg beams are uniformly lowered whereas the background intensity increases which is attributed to the formation of a disordered adsorbed layer. With Pd(111) adsorbed hydrogen causes a slight decrease of the background intensity and characteristic modifications of the intensity/voltage curve of the (0,0) beam, suggesting the formation of an ordered 1 × 1 structure. In the latter case energy shifts of the primary Bragg maxima were observed and are interpreted as being caused by an expansion of the layer spacing in the surface region by about 2% owing the partial dissolution of the hydrogen.