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SummaryScanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) was used to investigate the nucleation and growth of palladium clusters on two different, ultrathin, epitaxial, titania films grown on a Pt3Ti(111) surface. The first oxide phase, z'-TiOx, is anisotropic and consists of parallel stripes separated by trenches. Defects (i.e., oxygen vacancies) in this structure are confined to these trenches and act as nucleation sites. Therefore, the Pd clusters are mostly arranged in unidirectional rows along the trenches, creating a template effect. The second phase, w'-TiOx, exhibits a hexagonal, long range, (7 × 7)R21.8°, Moiré-type superstructure with fewer and shallower defects, making the template effect less discernible.

The adsorption of metal-free phthalocyanine molecules on an anisotropic Au(1 1 0)(1  ×  2) surface has been studied with ultraviolet (UV) photoemission, low-energy electron diffraction and low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy. In all cases, the molecules form rows in the [1 [Formula: see text] 0] direction, i.e. along the troughs of the reconstructed substrates. However, depending on the exposure and adsorption temperature, the substrate maintains (1  ×  2)- or transforms into a (1  ×  3)-reconstruction, and the molecular separation along the rows shrink from six to five times the Au-Au interatomic distance. The results are in agreement with previous density functional theory (DFT) calculations.

The growth as well as the compositional, electronic and structural properties of thin Au films deposited on a Pd(110) single crystal have been studied by means of ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS), photoemission of adsorbed xenon (PAX) and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) as a function of film thickness (ranging from submonolayer amounts up to multilayers) and temperature. Our investigations indicate a Volmer-Weber growth mode of Au on Pd(110) at a deposition temperature of 300 K and below. As former studies already have shown, depositing Au amounts of less than 1 ML results in the formation of unreconstructed pseudomorphic Au islands. Above a critical thickness of 2 ML the formation of a (1 × 2) missing-row reconstruction typical for Au can be observed. This reconstructed Au bilayer is still in registry with Pd(110) and, thus, strained. Furthermore, our experiments show a strong temperature dependence of the surface morphology. Au multilayers prepared at 150 K, which are already quite flat, undergo a weak smoothening of the topmost atomic layer by annealing the sample up to 350 K. At a surface temperature of ∼ 450 K the diffusion of Au atoms into the bulk is initiated at the Au-Pd interface. Annealing a 3 ML thick Au film to 600 K finally results in the formation of an Au-Pd surface alloy, which is stable up to 900 K. A complete loss of Au from the surface can be detected at around 1050 K. Adsorption of CO as a probe molecule on the Au containing surfaces is only possible at low temperatures.