Study of tin oxide: Surface properties and palladium adsorption
Description
Surface properties of various single-crystalline SnO2 surfaces were studied and the growth of palladium was investigated in the low-coverage regime. Metal - oxide structures play an important role in microelectronics and nanotechnology. They are also widely used in catalysis. Small catalytically-active metal particles on metal oxide substrates are key features in the gas sensing mechanism: they dramatically increase the sensitivity and selectivity of solid-state gas sensors towards target gases. Tin Oxide is widely used in solid-state gas sensors for detection of combustible and toxic gases. Its sensitivity and selectivity strongly depends on catalytic dopants, such as Pd or Pt, on the surface of the material. Thus, the characterization of Pd growth on tin oxide may give new insights into the catalytic and gas sensing mechanisms, and also help to understand fundamental steps that lead to various metal-on-oxide growth modes Upon deposition of Pd onto the reduced (101) surface of a SnO2 single crystal, 1D cluster growth was observed. Starting from very low coverages, one-dimensional Pd clusters grow on the terraces, which indicates that the Pd wets the reduced tin oxide surface. Pd deposition on the oxidized surface results in randomly distributed three-dimensional Pd clusters. The clusters are distributed at step edges and on terraces without any apparent preferential adsorption sites The one-dimensional clusters are imaged in scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) as straight, parallel nanostructures oriented along the [-101] direction, all with the same characteristic width of 0.5 nm and a height of 1 monolayer (ML). X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) experiments show no sign of Pd oxidation; i.e. Pd grows as a metal. There is a 0.5 eV shift in the Pd 3d 5/2 core level peak position to lower binding energy that occurs during the initial stages of the growth on the reduced surface. This is an indication of charge transfer from the Pd clusters to the substrate. Coverage-dependent Ultraviolet Photoelectron Spectroscopy (UPS) spectra show that, at submonolayer Pd coverages, a Pd 4d-derived peak appears at the same position (3eV from Fermi edge) in the band gap as the Sn surface state and shifts towards the Fermi edge as coverage increases. Angular resolved photoemission data of the valence band of the clean reduced SnO2 surface and the Pd dosed reduced surface shows a strong correlation between the Sn 5s derived surface state and the Pd 4d state. The position, as well as the shape of Pd 4d peak closely follows the position and the shape of the 5s derived Sn peak in both low-index directions. This is a sign of a strong electronic interaction, hybridization between Pd 4d and Sn 5s derived states Scanning tunneling microscopy experiments on a clean, reduced SnO 2 (100)-(1x1) surface reveal surface defects with zero, one, and two dimensions. Point defects consist of missing SnO/SnO2 units. Line defects are probably crystallographic shear planes that extend to the surface and manifest themselves as rows of atoms, shifted half a unit cell along the [010] direction. Their ends act as preferential nucleation sites for the formation of Pd clusters upon vapor-deposition. Submonolayer coverages of Pd deposited on the reduced surface at room temperature by vapour deposition result in the formation of three-dimensional clusters nucleating on the terraces. Areas of a more reduced surface phase, i.e. elongated 'holes', observed at the surface after annealing to higher temperatures, still with a (1x1) structure and a half-unit-cell deep, form at [001]-oriented step edges Recently, the use of nanobelts and nanoribbons has been suggested as novel materials for gas sensing applications. The large surface-to-volume ratio of the semiconducting metal oxide nanobelts and the congruence of the carrier screening length with their lateral dimensions make them highly sensitive and efficient transducers of surface chemical processes into electrical signal The surface morphology of an individual nanobelts (NB) was studied with STM. Atomically resolved STM images of NBs reveal an 1x1 (101) SnO2 structure on the top surface of the NB. To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first atomically resolved STM image of SnO2 nanobelts. The thermal stability of the NBs was studied with SEM. The critical temperatures were determined, where structural changes occur in UHV, O2, and air. XPS was used to characterize chemical composition and monitor the cleanness of the NB material. Ca and C contamination was detected on as-grown SnO 2 nanobelts. O plasma, ozone treatment, and annealing in oxygen were used to remove the contaminants