Gold chain formation via local lifting of surface reconstruction by hot electron injection on H_2(D_2)/Au(111)
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2020
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American Chemical Society
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Abstract
The hexagonal close packed surface of gold shows a 22 x root 3 "herringbone" surface reconstruction which makes it unique among the (111) surfaces of all metals. This long-range energetically favored dislocation pattern appears in response to the strong tensile stress that would be present on the unreconstructed surface. Adsorption of molecular and atomic species can be used to tune this surface stress and lift the herringbone reconstruction. Here we show that herringbone reconstruction can be controllably lifted in ultrahigh vacuum at cryogenic temperatures by precise hot electron injection in the presence of hydrogen molecules. We use the sharp tip of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) for charge carrier injection and characterization of the resulting chain nanostructures. By comparing STM images, rotational spectromicroscopy and ab initio calculations, we show that formation of gold atomic chains is associated with release of gold atoms from the surface, lifting of the reconstruction, dissociation of H_2 molecules, and formation of surface hydrides. Gold hydrides grow in a zipper-like mechanism forming chains along the [1 (1) over bar0] directions of the Au(111) surface and can be manipulated by further electron injection. Finally, we demonstrate that Au(111) terraces can be transformed with nearly perfect terrace selectivity over distances of hundreds of nanometers.
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©2020 American Chemical Society
C.G. was funded by Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities under the projects MAT2017-88258-R and MDM-2014-0377 (María de Maeztu Programme for Units of Excellence in R&D). C.G. acknowledge the computer resources at Cibeles and the technical support provided by
405 the Scientific Computing Center at UAM, project FI-2019- 0028. PM acknowledges support from the A.v. Humboldt Foundation, the ERC Synergy Program (grant no. ERC-2013-SYG-610256, Nanocosmos), Spanish MINECO (MAT2017-85089-C2-1-R) and the “Comunidad de Madrid” for its support to the FotoArt-CM Project S2018/NMT-4367 through the Program of R&D activities between research groups in Technologies 2013, cofinanced by European Structural Funds.