title: Reducing the V2O3(0001) surface through electron bombardment--a quantitative structure determination with I/V-LEED.
abstract: The (0001) surface of vanadium sesquioxide, V2O3, is terminated by vanadyl groups under standard ultra high vacuum preparation conditions. Reduction with electrons results in a chemically highly active surface with a well-defined LEED pattern indicating a high degree of order. In this work we report the first quantitative structure determination of a reduced V2O3(0001) surface. We identify two distinct surface phases by STM, one well ordered and one less well ordered. I/V-LEED shows the ordered phase to be terminated by a single vanadium atom per surface unit cell on a quasi-hexagonal oxygen layer with three atoms per two-dimensional unit cell. Furthermore we compare the method of surface reduction via electron bombardment with the deposition of V onto a vanadyl terminated film. The latter procedure was previously proposed to result in a structure with three surface vanadium atoms in the 2D unit cell and we confirm this with simulated STM images.
authors.affiliation: Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, Faradayweg 4-6, 14195 Berlin, Germany. kuhlenbeck@fhi-berlin.mpg.de.
authors.forename: Felix E
authors.initials: FE
authors.lastname: Feiten
authors.affiliation: Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, Faradayweg 4-6, 14195 Berlin, Germany. kuhlenbeck@fhi-berlin.mpg.de.
authors.forename: Helmut
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kuhlenbeck
authors.affiliation: Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, Faradayweg 4-6, 14195 Berlin, Germany. kuhlenbeck@fhi-berlin.mpg.de.
authors.forename: Hans-Joachim
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Freund