title: Growth mode and oxidation state analysis of individual cerium oxide islands on Ru(0001).
abstract: The growth of cerium oxide on Ru(0001) by reactive molecular beam epitaxy has been investigated using low-energy electron microscopy (LEEM) and diffraction as well as local valence band photoemission. The oxide islands are found to adopt a carpet-like growth mode, which depending on the local substrate morphology and misorientation leads to deviations from the otherwise almost perfect equilateral shape at a growth temperature of 850 °C. Furthermore, although even at this high growth temperature the micron-sized CeO₂(111) islands are found to exhibit different lattice registries with respect to the hexagonal substrate, the combination of dark-field LEEM and local intensity-voltage analysis reveals that the oxidation state of the islands is homogeneous down to the 10 nm scale.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Bremen, Otto-Hahn-Allee 1, 28359 Bremen, Germany. flege@ifp.uni-bremen.de
authors.forename: J I
authors.initials: JI
authors.lastname: Flege
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Kaemena
authors.forename: S D
authors.initials: SD
authors.lastname: Senanayake
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Höcker
authors.forename: J T
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Sadowski
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Falta
keywords: Ceria; Low-energy electron microscopy and diffraction; Oxide films; Rare-earth oxides