The bandstructure of Pd(110) above the fermi level

The band-structure of Pd(110) was studied by k-resolved inverse photoemission (IPE). The data are interpreted on the basis of a relativistic band-structure calculation. Apart from direct bulk band transitions, weak surface umklapp and surface emission features are observed. Four different surface state bands could be detected in the gaps at X and Y. An anomalous temperature behaviour is found for a transition into the d-bands close to the Fermi level. Finally, structures resulting from LEED reflections are identified in the IPE spectra and their characteristics are discussed.     

Atomic and molecular oxygen adsorption on Ag(111)

The adsorption of O₂ on Ag(111) between 150 and 650 K has been studied with thermal desorption spectroscopy, Auger and photoelectron spectroscopies, and low-energy electron diffraction. A molecularly adsorbed O₂ species is populated with extremely low sticking probability (~ 5 X 10^?6) at 150 K. This species desorbs, with little dissociation, at 217 K. An atomically adsorbed species, with an O(1s) BE of 528.2 eV, is populated at 490 K with a sticking probability near 10^?6. This species exists in islands of local coverage θ_O ? 0.41, displaying a p(4 X 4)-O LEED pattern. It associatively desorbs at 579 K as O₂, and can be titrated at room temperature with CO to produce CO₂. There is also evidence for a subsurface oxygen species which reactivates below 600 K. Surface carbonate (CO_3,a) can be produced from O_a and CO₂ gas. These results are compared with similar species on Ag(110). A kinetic model is developed which describes the interaction of O₂ with these surfaces over a broad range of temperatures, and provides energetic values for the O₂/Ag interaction potential.     

Atomic scale characterization of oxygen adsorbates on Al(111) by scanning tunneling microscopy

We present atomic scale STM pictures of clean and oxygen containing Al(111) surfaces. Little influence of the surface oxygen on the topography of the surfaces is found. Three different oxygen species can be distinguished. One of them is associated with adsorbed oxygen and found to grow in small islands upon adsorption at 300 K. Characteristic hexagonal nuclei, created upon annealing of a dilute oxygen adlayer, represent the second one. By comparison with existing spectroscopic data these are assigned to nuclei of a surface oxide.     

The angular behaviour of electrons inelastically scattered from the shape resonance for CO chemisorbed on Ni(110)

Recent vibrational high resolution electron energy loss experiments (HREELS) have shown evidence for molecular shape resonances in the inelastic scattering of electrons from chemisorbed molecules. Such resonances arise from the capture of the incident electron in a quasibound state of the molecule, leading to the formation of a temporary negative ion. They are manifest as an enhancement in the intensity of a specific vibrational mode at a characteristic incident electron energy. In contrast to gaseous species, the alignment which the surface provides for the chemisorbed species, can be exploited to determine the angular characteristics of the resonant state. In this work, we show evidence for a shape resonance, centred at an incident energy of 18 eV, for CO/Ni(110). The angular dependence of the scattered electron intensity has been measured for the CO stretching vibration. The results are discussed in terms of the spherical harmonic components of the resonant state, modified by vibrational broadening caused by low frequency bending modes associated with the bonding of the CO molecule to the surface.     

Hydrogen adsorption on Pd/TiFe (110) surface

Adsorption of hydrogen on the TiFe (110) surface covered by palladium monolayer was investigated using the full potential linearized augmented plane wave method within the local density approximation. Influence of palladium coating to adsorption properties of the TiFe (110) surface as well as difference it from Pd/TiFe (100) are discussed.     

Surface reconstruction of Cu (111) upon oxygen adsorption

Low-energy He⁺ ion scattering (IS) in combination with AES, LEED and work function measurements has been applied for the determination of surface reconstruction of Cu(111) upon oxygen adsorption. IS data clearly indicate that oxygen is not significant incorporated into the bulk at room temperature adsorption, however the surface shows reconstruction by displacement of Cu atoms by 0.3 Å. The disappearance of structure of both Cu_IS and O_IS in the “?_in pattern” demonstrate the development of a disordered layer of reconstruction centres. At saturation coverage, a rough and dis-ordered oxygen-copper surface layer is present.     

A DFT study of H adsorption on Pt(111) and Pt-Ru(111) surfaces

In this work a comparative analysis between different Pt-Ru(111) surface models and pure Pt(111) surface is presented. Some aspects of the electronic structure of the surfaces and hydrogen adsorption are analysed based on density functional theory calculations. The hydrogen adsorption energy is significantly reduced when Ru is present on the surface. The substitution of Pt atoms by Ru atoms reinforce the Pt-H bond while the metal-metal bond is strongly modified, making the system less stable.     

Inverse photoemission spectroscopy of the unoccupied electronic structure of Na/Cu(110)

The unoccupied electronic states of Na thin films on a Cu(110) substrate have been measured by inverse photoemission spectroscopy (IPES). The IPES spectrum provides the intensity of the unoccupied states, which decreases with increasing Na coverage at off-normal incidence of the electron beam. The IPES spectra at 17 and 19 eV incident electron energies show a shift towards the Fermi level with increasing Na coverage for the peak at ∼7.8 eV.     

Elastic and inelastic scattering of slow positrons from a LiF(100) surface

The intensity profile for the elastic specular reflection of 5–100 eV positrons from a LiF(100) surface (ang1e of incidence 45°) has been measured using a simple time-of-flight spectrometer. The profile exhibits strong maxima below 25 eV and a smaller peak at 57 eV. Positron energy loss spectra have also been measured for a range of incident energies by retarding field analysis of the scattered beam. The mean energy loss appears to increase with increasing incident beam energy. Both the elastic and inelastic results are compared with similar data for slow-electron scattering obtained with the same apparatus.     

The adsorption of water on clean and oxygen covered Cu(110)

The water adsorption on clean and oxygen precovered Cu(110) surfaces is studied by means of UPS, LEED, work function measurements and ELS. At 90 K on the clean surface molecular water adsorption is indicated by UPS. The H₂O molecules are bonded at the oxygen end and the H-O-H angle is increased as compared with the free molecule. In the temperature range between 90 and 300 K distorted H₂O molecules and adsorbed hydroxyl species (OH) are detected, which are desorbed at room temperature. On an oxygen covered surface hydroxyl groups are formed by dissociation of adsorbed water molecules at a lower temperature than on the clean surface. Multilayers of condensed water are found below 140 K in both cases.     

Metallization of the Ge(111) surface at high-temperature probed by energy-loss and Auger spectroscopies

We present new electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) and Auger (AES) experiments aimed to study the structural transition of the Ge(111) surface taking place at high temperatures. Our advanced high-temperature set-up allowed us to collect accurate EELS spectra near the M_2,3 excitation edges and AES MMV and MVV spectra, corresponding to different probing depths ranging from 4 to 10 Å. The metallization of the surface has been clearly detected by the shift of the M_2,3 edge and of the MMV, MVV Auger energies. A detailed study of the transition has been performed using a fine temperature step under thermal equilibrium conditions. The AES and EELS experiments show that a sudden semiconductor-metal transition takes place at about 1000 K involving mainly the topmost layers. Deeper layers within 10 Å are also involved in the metallization process (in a range of 10 above 1010 K) and a smooth change in the topmost layers is also observed at higher temperatures up to 1070 K. These transitions are not fully reversible upon cooling (down to 870 K). Structural and electronic characteristics of the surface transition are discussed in light of available models.     

Bromine adsorption on Cu(111)

The dissociative chemisorption of molecular bromine on Cu(111) at 300 K has been studied using ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS), Auger electron spectroscopy (AES), low energy electron diffraction (LEED) and work function change measurements. A (√3 × √3)R30° structure is formed initially at a bromine coverage of 0.33 ML. This then converts to a (9√3 × 9√3)R30° compression structure with a coverage of 0.41 ML. The coincidence distance of the compression structure is determined entirely by the van der Waals diameter of adsorbed bromine. The applicability of using the van der Waals diameters of the three halogens, Cl, Br and I, to predict the saturation compression structures on Cu(111), is discussed.     

Investigation of oxygen adsorption on Cu(110) by low-energy ion bombardment

The interaction of molecular oxygen with a Cu(110) surface is investigated by means of low energy ion scattering (LEIS) and secondary ion emission. The position of chemisorbed oxygen relative to the matrix atoms of the Cu(110) surface could be determined using a shadow cone model, from measurements of Ne⁺ ions scattered by adsorbed oxygen atoms. The adsorbed oxygen atoms are situated 0.6 ± 0.1 Å below the midpoint between two adjacent atoms in a 〈100〉 surface row. The results of the measurements of the ion impact desorption of adsorbed oxygen suggest a dominating contribution of sputtering processes. Ion focussing effects also contributes to the oxygen desorption. The ion induced and the spontaneous oxygen adsorption processes are studied using different experimental methods. Sticking probability values obtained during ion bombardment show a strong increase due to the ion bombardment.     

Atomic and molecular adsorption on Pd(111)

The adsorption properties of a variety of atomic species (H, O, N, S, and C), molecular species (N₂, HCN, CO, NO, and NH₃) and molecular fragments (CN, NH₂, NH, CH₃, CH₂, CH, HNO, NOH, and OH) are calculated on the (111) facet of palladium using periodic self-consistent density functional theory (DFT–GGA) calculations at ¼ ML coverage. For each species, we determine the optimal binding geometry and corresponding binding energy. The vibrational frequencies of these adsorbed species are calculated and are found to be in good agreement with experimental values that have been reported in literature. From the binding energies, we calculate potential energy surfaces for the decomposition of NO, CO, N₂, NH₃, and CH₄ on Pd(111), showing that only the decomposition of NO is thermochemically preferred to its molecular desorption.     

Thermal behavior of the roughened Cu(110) surface

The roughened Cu(110) surface was prepared by annealing the clean surface at various temperatures ranging from 700 to ∼1000 K. A significant drop in intensity of reflection anisotropy spectroscopy (RAS) peak at 2.1 eV photon energy as a function of increasing sample temperature was found for annealing above the roughening transition at 900 K. The observed change of 2.1 eV peak in RAS spectra is because of the surface state Fermi level shift due to temperature change. The RAS result is in good agreement with an unoccupied surface state energy using inverse photoemission spectroscopy (IPES). New IPES results indicate that the unoccupied surface state intensity decreases with increasing annealing temperature. It was also found that the unoccupied surface state was shifted. IPES results provide that the contributions of the surface state to surface optical properties at 2.1 eV are relevant for the RAS technique.     

Purely quadratic dispersion of surface plasmon in Ag/Ni(111): the influence of electron confinement

Surface plasmon dispersion in nanoscale thin Ag films deposited onto the Ni(111) surface was investigated by angle‐resolved electron energy loss spectroscopy. We found that the dispersion curve contains only the quadratic term. The vanishing of the linear term was ascribed to the presence in the film of Ag 5sp‐related quantum well states. Screening effects enhanced by electron confinement in Ag quantum well states push the position of the centroid of the induced charge of the surface plasmon less inside the interface compared to other Ag systems, rendering null the linear coefficient of the dispersion curve. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

The adsorption of CO and oxygen on Cu layers on a W(110) surface

The adsorption of CO, and to a lesser extent that of oxygen on Cu layers deposited on a W(110) surface has been investigated by thermal desorption. Auger, and XPS measurements. For CO the amount adsorbed decreases monotonically with Cu thickness from 1–5 layers. For O there is a slight increase for 1 layer, followed by a steep decrease up to 4 Cu layers where the amount adsorbed levels off. CO adsorption shifts the core levels of Cu (observed for 1 layer of Cu) to higher binding energy by 0.4 eV; the O 1s level of CO is also shifted to higher binding energy by 1.5 eV, relative to CO/W(110) suggesting that electron transfer from CO occurs but is passed on to the underlying W. For O adsorption there is very little shift in the Cu core levels or in the O 1s level, relative to O/W(110). Thermal desorption of CO at saturation coverage from Cu/W(110) shows desorption peaks at 195, 227 and 266 K, as well as small peaks associated with CO desorption from clean W, namely a peak at 363 K and β-desorption peaks at 1080 and 1180 K. As CO coverage is decreased the 195 and 227 K peaks disappear successively; the W-like peaks remain unchanged in intensity. It is argued that the latter may be due to adsorption on bare W at domain boundaries of the Cu overlayer, while the 190–266 K peaks are associated with adsorption on Cu, but probably involve reconstruction of the Cu layer. For n = 2–8 a single but composite peak is seen, shifting from 180 to 150 K as Cu thickness increases as well as a minor peak at 278 K, which virtually vanishes on annealing the Cu deposit at 850 K. The effect of tungsten electronic structure on the behavior of adsorbates on the Cu overlayers, as well as similar effects in other snadwich systems are discussed.     

The adsorption of CO on Cu(110)

The adsorption of CO on Cu(110) has been studied by LEED, surface potentials and infrared spectroscopy. With increasing surface coverage the s.p. passes through a maximum value of 0.29 V and than falls to 0.17 V at saturation. The heat of adsorption is nearly constant (~55 kJ mol^?1) up to the maximum s.p. but then falls rapidly. A ( 2× 1) structure is formed near the s.p. maximum, followed by a structure which is compressed in the [11?0] direction and poorly ordered in the [001] direction but tending towards c(1.3 × 2). At low coverage two infrared bands appear at 2088 and 2104 cm^?1; their relative intensity is similar at 77, 195 and 295 K. As the coverage increases, the bands shift in frequency and merge into a single band at 2094 cm^?1. The origin of the two bands is discussed in relation to the overlayer structure. Strong interaction between CO molecules is shown by the spectra of mixtures of ¹³CO and ¹²CO.