Dynamical low-energy electron diffraction analyses of clean and H-adsorbed Ir(111) surfaces

Abstract

Structures of Clean and H-adsorbed Ir(111) surfaces were studied by dynamical analyses of low-energy electron diffraction (LEED). LEED pattern for the Clean Ir(111) surface was 1×1. Dynamical analysis of LEED spot intensity vs incident electron enegy (I-V) curves for the clean Ir (111) surface revealed that the layer distance between the 1st and the 2nd layers (d 12) equals to 0.2207 ± 0.002 nm, which is almost equal to the bulk value (0.2217 nm). It appears that our result contradicts an previous report, which concluded that d12 equals to 0.216 nm which is 2.6% smaller than the bulk value. However their error bar was so large (±0.01 nm) that it is suggested that our result is the accurate atomic structure of the clean Ir(111) surface. LEED pattern was almost unchanged by H adsorption of 1 ML (1.56 × 1015 cm-2) at 80 K. The difference between LEED I-V curves before and after hydrogen adsorption was very small and it was impossible to determine the adsorption structure on Ir(111) but it can be conculded that no reconstruction occurs and only a very small relaxation occurs by the adsorption of hydrogen on Ir(111) surface.