In particular metal oxide surfaces, widely used in industry as supports for catalysts. [Enterkin et al., Nature Materials (2010) 9, 245 doi:10.1038/nmat2636 Letter] this knowledge of the surface layer of atoms is critical to understanding a material's overall properties.
Using a combination of advanced experimental tools coupled with theoretical calculations, the research team has shown how, using methods commonly taught to undergraduate chemistry students, one can understand how atoms are arranged on a material's surface.
“For a long time we have not understood oxide surfaces,” said Marks, professor of materials science at Northwestern. “We only have had relatively simple models constructed from crystal planes of the bulk structure, and these have not enabled us to predict where the atoms should be on a surface.
“Now we have something that seems to work,” Marks said. “It's the bond-valence-sum method, which has been used for many years to understand bulk materials. The way to understand oxide surfaces turns out to be to look at the bonding patterns and how the atoms are arranged and then to follow this method.”
In the study, Northwestern graduate student James Enterkin analyzed electron diffraction patterns from a strontium titanate surface to work out the atomic structure. He combined the patterns with scanning-tunnelling microscopy images obtained by Bruce Russell at Oxford. Enterkin then combined them with density functional calculations and bond-valence sums, showing that those that had bonding similar to that found in bulk oxides were those with the lowest energy.
This simple and intuitive, yet powerful concept [the bond-valence-sum method] is widely used to analyze and predict structures in inorganic chemistry. Its successful description of the surface reconstruction of SrTiO3 (110) shows that this approach could be relevant for similar phenomena in other materials.”
Our results indicate that the rules of inorganic coordination chemistry apply to oxide surfaces, with concepts such as homologous series and intergrowths as valid at the surface as they are in the bulk.