Synopsis and Outlook

As in other fields of nanosdence, the application of STM techniques to the study of ultrathin oxide layers has opened up a new era of oxide materials research. New emergent phenomena of structure, stoichiometry, and associated physical and chemical properties have been observed and new oxide phases, hitherto unknown in the form of bulk material, have been deteded in nanolayer form and have been elucidated with the help of the STM. Some of these oxide nanolayers are and will be of paramount interest to the field of advanced catalysis, as active and passive layers in catalytic model studies, on the one hand, and perhaps even as components in real nanocatalytic applications, on the other hand. We have illustrated with the help of prototypical examples the growth and the structural variety of oxide nanolayers on metal surfaces as seen from the perspective of the STM. The selection of the particular oxide systems presented here refleds in part their relevance in catalysis and is also related to our own scientific experience. 

This work has been supported by the Austrian Science Funds within the National Research Network Nanoscience on Surfaces. FPN acknowledges with gratitude the excellent hospitalities of Professor Wolf-Dieter Schneider, EPFL Lausanne, and Professor Charlie Campbell, University of Washington, during his sabbatical stays in Lausanne and Seattle in 2008. 

7 Lundgren, E., Mikkelsen, A., Andersen, J.N., Kresse, G., Schmid, M and Varga, P. (2006) J. Phys. Condens. Matter, 18, R481. 

11 Giordano, L. and Pacchioni, G. (2006) Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 8, 3335. 

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