Edge atom depression on stepped Cu(410)

The position of the edge atoms of a stepped Cu(410) surface has been measured by Ion Scattering Spectroscopy using 21 keV H⁺. The edge atoms are depressed 5.0±1.5% of the copper lattice spacing, corresponding to 0.18±0.05 Å.     

Atomic structure of the Cu(410)-O surface: STM visualization of oxygen and copper atoms

The structure of the Cu(410)-O surface is studied by a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) with atomic resolution. Tunneling is accomplished for various states of the tungsten STM probe, which allows oxygen and copper atoms to be visualized separately.     

The structure of a stepped copper (410) surface determined by ion scattering spectroscopy

Ion Scattering Spectroscopy applied in the multiple scattering mode is used to determine the structure of a stepped Cu(410) surface. The energy of singly scattered ions is influenced by the presence of neighbour surface atoms. This effect can be used to determine interatomic distances up to about 10Å, as is shown by the results of 8 keV Ar⁺ and 11 keV Ne⁺ scattered through θ = 50°. The edge-edge distance of the stepped copper surface appears to be in accordance with the results of LEED experiments obtained by other investigators. The experiments show a good agreement with the results of the analytical 3-atom model of Poelsema. The energy of the so-called “plateau collision” appears to depend on the effective plateau length l as measured in the plane of incidence. Lengths l between 15 and 60 Å can be determined with an accuracy of 5 Å. Results are shown for 8 and 12 keV Ar⁺, θ = 40° and 60°, and 8 keV Kr⁺ θ = 40°. The experimental dependence of the energy on lis described correctly by a phenomenological model.     

Inelastic scattering of He atoms from a Cu(110) surface

A He beam has been used to measure inelastic scattering from a Cu(110) surface. The scattering was a result of predominantly single phonon events and both energy gain and loss processes were observed. This was in contrast to Cu(001) where only energy loss was observed. For Cu(110), aligned in the [001] azimuth, partial dispersion relations have been measured which meant that phonons with ΔQ values up to the zone boundary value have not been detected under the present experimental conditions. The elastic incoherent component varied with azimuthal angle for Cu(110).     

Diffraction of helium from a stepped surface: Cu(117) — An experimental study

The scattering of an helium nozzle beam (incident energy 21 and 63 meV) from a copper (117) stepped surface has been studied for crystal temperature ranging from 70 to 773 K. The diffraction pattern from the step array is readily seen. The influence of residual impurity on the surface is carefully discussed. Special attention has been paid to the influence of experimental factors upon peak shapes. True peak amplitudes are deduced. The peak intensities versus temperature and versus incidence angle has been measured. Extrapolation of the intensities to 0 K allows a direct comparison of the data with the prediction of a hard corrugated wall model. A corrugation profile is given which fits quite well the data. Clear evidence for resonances with bound states has been found. Three energy levels of the potential well are thus determined (5.9,4.0, 2.1 meV) which agrees with a Morse or a 3–9 potential.     

Reconstructed domains on a stepped W(100) surface

A model calculation is carried out for the scattering of low energy electron diffraction from reconstructed (√2 × √2)R45° domains on a stepped W(100) surface. The existence of monotonically increasing steps causes the integral order beams to split and the separation of the splitting oscillates with the incident electron energy. We show that due to the existence of an antiphase relationship among the randomly nucleated reconstructed domains, the half-order beams neither split nor oscillate with the incident electron energy. This nonsplitting of half order beams is in agreement with the observation by Debe and King (DK). We also show that the measured intensity profile of a half order beam is equal to the signal intensity profile from the individual finite size domains convoluted with the instrument response function. This gives a simple way to evaluate the reconstructed domain size quantitatively. From the angular distribution of the half-order beam intensity we deduce that the reconstructed domains are somewhat round in shape, instead of the “long strips” proposed by DK. Also, the long range inhibition (20 Å) of the reconstruction near the step edge suggested by DK does not necessarily follow from our analysis. As a matter of fact, there is evidence showing that the inhibition (if it exists at all) can be short range in nature. Our suggestion is in agreement with the observation of the reconstructed W(100) surface by Melmed, Tung, Graham and Smith using FIM technique.     

Ranges of implanted atoms under polyatomic cluster bombardment of the Cu (111) surface

A computer simulation of the bombardment of the Cu (111) surface with Cu_N and Au_N polyatomic clusters differing in size (N = 1, 6, and 13) with energies of 0.5 and 5 keV/atom has been performed in the framework of classical molecular dynamics. The spatial distribution of the implanted atoms, their ranges, and range fluctuations (straggling) depending on the size N and energy E/N of the incident cluster has been investigated. It has been shown that an increase in the mean range and range straggling is observed at a fixed energy per incident atom as the cluster size N increases. At the same time, the effect of an increase in the range (at a specified value of E/N) gradually disappears with increasing cluster energy, whereas the effect of an increase in straggling is retained. These tendencies qualitatively agree with the available experimental observations. It has been shown that the dominating contribution to the increase in the atom range of the implanted cluster is made by the so-called clearing-the-way effect, which is weakened with increasing the incident cluster energy. The effect of the range straggling increasing is significantly due to the presence of nonlinear “spike” effects at the bombarded target.     

Relaxation of (111) silicon surface atoms from studies of Si4H9 clusters

Self-consistent Hartree-Fock and generalized valence bond calculations have been performed on clusters modeling the (111) silicon surface. We find that the surface state is accurately described as a dangling bond surface orbital with 93% p character. We determined the optimum relaxation of the surface layer to be 0.08 Å toward the second layer. In the positive ion, the surface atom relaxes toward the second layer by an additional 0.30 Å, and for the negative ion the surface atom moves toward the vacuum 0.25 Å. The vertical ionization potential was found to be 5.78 eV (experimental values are 5.6 – 5.9 eV) while the calculated adiabatic electron affinity is 3.02 eV.     

Poisoning and non-poisoning oxygen on Cu(410)

We have investigated ethene and oxygen co-adsorption on Cu(410) by high resolution electron energy loss spectroscopy. We find that these two species compete for the adsorption sites and that pre-exposure to oxygen affects ethene adsorption more or less strongly depending on oxygen coverage and the kind of occupied sites. The c(2 × 2) O overlayer is inert with respect to ethene adsorption, while when some oxygen is removed by thermally induced subsurface incorporation, ethene chemisorption is restored. The latter species also adsorbs on the disordered oxygen phase formed when O(2) is dosed at low crystal temperature. Contrary to the bare surface case, most of the ethene ends up in a π-bonded configuration. Dehydrogenation occurs, too, albeit as a minority channel. The so-produced carbon reacts already at low temperature with adsorbed oxygen to yield carbon monoxide, which desorbs around 190 K.     

Nanostructures made by mixing Rh atoms on N-adsorbed Cu(001) surface

Nanostructures and nanopattern formation by mixing Rh atoms were studied on the N-saturated Cu(001) surface using scanning tunneling microscopy and X-ray photoemission spectroscopy. Most of the Rh atoms are in the topmost layer of the surface, and make a line structure of two atomic width in the <100> direction. Each Rh atom in the line is bonded to one N atom. The density of trench-like structures at the N-saturated surface decreases with increasing the density of the lines. This indicates that the line structure reduces the surface stress induced by N adsorption. When the Rh atoms cover more than a quarter of surface on average, the lines form a rectangular pattern at the surface. The average separation decreases with the increase of the Rh density, and is 4 nm for the 30% Rh coverage. The pattern formation is attributed to the efficient reduction of lattice strain as the grid pattern on the partially N-adsorbed Cu(001) surface.