Iron Oxides on Pt

Virtually all subsequent surface science-related studies on Fe oxide films have been performed using the Pt(l 1 1) surface as a metallic substrate. The established preparation procedure for well-ordered Fe oxide films on Pt(l 11) involves PVDof Fe in 1-2 M L quantities onto clean Pt(l 11), followed by annealing in oxygen at elevated temperature this process can be repeated until oxide layers of the desired thickness have been formed. The preparation of Fe oxides on Pt(l 1 1) and the morphology of the resulting films as a function of the preparation parameters as well as the properties of Fe oxides in relation to catalysis have been comprehensively reviewed by Weiss and Ranke [106]. 

All Fe oxide films on Pt have strongly relaxed, unreconstructed bulk-terminated surfaces, but while the Fe304 and Fe203 oxide layers are similar to their respective bulk compounds, the ultrathin FeO layers are true 2D oxide phases that are different from the FeO bulk and stabilized by the metal-oxide interface. 

At higher coverages, (2 x 2) and ( 3 x J3)R30° structures have been observed, which have been ascribed as before [108, 109] to Fe-terminated Fe304(l 1 1) and a-Fe2O3(0 0 0 1) phases, respectively. 

The physical origin of this structural flexibility of the FeO overlayer is still unclear, the more so since no clear trend is observable in the sequence of lattice parameters of the coincidence structures. The FeO(l 11) phase forming up to coverages of 2-3 ML is clearly stabilized by the interactions with the Pt substrate since FeO is thermodynamically metastable with respect to the higher iron oxides [106,114], FeO has the rock salt structure and the (111) plane yields a polar surface with a high surface energy [115], which requires stabilization by internal reconstruction or external compensation. The structural relaxation observed in the form of the reduced Fe—O 

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Weiss W, Ritter M. Metal oxide heteroepitaxy Stranski-Krastanov growth of iron oxides on Pt(lll). Phys Rev B. 1999 59 5201-13. 

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