STM Imaging of Oxide Nanolayer Model Systems

Since the main topic of this review is STM imaging, growth properties, surface morphology, and atomic structures of oxide nanosystems are the central themes. Oxide nanolayers on noble metal surfaces often display very complex structural arrangements, as illustrated in the following sections. The determination of the surface structure of a complex oxide nanophase by STM methods is, however, by no means trivial resolution at the atomic scale in STM is a necessary but not sufficient condition for elucidating the atomic structure of an oxide nanophase. The problem 

The structure of the review is organized as follows. In Section 6.2, we will address experimental aspects concerning apparatus developments and oxide nanolayer preparation methods, and briefly comment on the interplay between experimental and theoretical results. Section 6.3 constitutes the main body of this chapter, where we present case studies of selected oxide-metal systems. They have been chosen according to their prototypical oxide nanosystem behavior and because of their importance in catalysis. We conclude with a synopsis and a brief outlook speculating on future developments. 

The combination of state-of-the-art first-principles calculations of the electronic structure with the Tersoff-Hamann method [38] to simulate STM images provides a successful approach to interpret the STM images from oxide surfaces at the atomic scale. Typically, the local energy-resolved density of states (DOS) is evaluated and isosurfaces of constant charge density are determined. The comparison between simulated and measured high-resolution STM images at different tunneling 

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