title: A Quantitative Structural Investigation of the 0.1 wt % Nb-SrTiO3(001)/H2O Interface.
abstract: Surface X-ray diffraction has been employed to elucidate the structure of the interface between a well-characterized (001) surface of 0.1 wt % Nb-SrTiO3and liquid H2O. Results are reported for the clean surface, the surface in contact with a drop of liquid water, and the surface after the water droplet has been removed with a flow of nitrogen. The investigation revealed that the clean surface, prepared via annealing in 1 × 10-2mbar O2partial pressure, is unreconstructed and rough on a short length scale. The surface is covered with large terraces, the topmost layer of which is either TiO2or SrO with an area ratio of about 7/3. For the surface in contact with water, our results reveal that associative H2O adsorption is favored for the TiO2-terminated terrace whereas adsorption is dissociative for the SrO-terminated terrace, which validates recent first-principles calculations. After removal of the water droplet, the surface largely resembles the water-covered surface but now with a disordered overlayer of water present on the surface.
authors.affiliation: London Centre for Nanotechnology and Department of Chemistry, University College London , 20 Gordon Street, London WC1H OAJ, United Kingdom ; ESRF , 6 rue Jules Horowitz, F-38000 Grenoble cedex, France.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hussain
authors.affiliation: Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona (CSIC) , Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain.
authors.forename: X
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Torrelles
authors.affiliation: ESRF , 6 rue Jules Horowitz, F-38000 Grenoble cedex, France.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Rajput
authors.affiliation: London Centre for Nanotechnology and Department of Chemistry, University College London , 20 Gordon Street, London WC1H OAJ, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nicotra
authors.affiliation: London Centre for Nanotechnology and Department of Chemistry, University College London , 20 Gordon Street, London WC1H OAJ, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Thornton
authors.affiliation: ESRF , 6 rue Jules Horowitz, F-38000 Grenoble cedex, France.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zegenhagen