Liu Dairong, Li Linfei, Jiang Nan
Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60607, United States.
Department of Physics, University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60607, United States.
Chem Biomed Imaging. 2024 Mar 21;2(5):345-351. doi: 10.1021/cbmi.4c00015. eCollection 2024 May 27.
Metal-supported ultrathin ferrous oxide (FeO) has attracted immense interest in academia and industry due to its widespread applications in heterogeneous catalysis. However, chemical insight into the local structural characteristics of FeO, despite its critical importance in elucidating structure-property relationships, remains elusive. In this work, we report the nanoscale chemical probing of gold (Au)-supported ultrathin FeO via ultrahigh-vacuum tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (UHV-TERS) and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). For comparative analysis, single-crystal Au(111) and Au(100) substrates are used to tune the interfacial properties of FeO. Although STM images show distinctly different moiré superstructures on FeO nanoislands on Au(111) and Au(100), TERS demonstrates the same chemical nature of FeO by comparable vibrational features. In addition, combined TERS and STM measurements identify a unique wrinkled FeO structure on Au(100), which is correlated to the reassembly of the intrinsic Au(100) surface reconstruction due to FeO deposition. Beyond revealing the morphologies of ultrathin FeO on Au substrates, our study provides a thorough understanding of the local interfacial properties and interactions of FeO on Au, which could shed light on the rational design of metal-supported FeO catalysts. Furthermore, this work demonstrates the promising utility of combined TERS and STM in chemically probing the structural properties of metal-supported ultrathin oxides on the nanoscale.
金属负载的超薄氧化亚铁(FeO)因其在多相催化中的广泛应用而在学术界和工业界引起了极大的关注。然而,尽管FeO的局部结构特征对阐明结构-性能关系至关重要,但对其进行化学洞察仍然难以实现。在这项工作中,我们通过超高真空针尖增强拉曼光谱(UHV-TERS)和扫描隧道显微镜(STM)报告了金(Au)负载的超薄FeO的纳米级化学探测。为了进行对比分析,使用单晶Au(111)和Au(100)衬底来调节FeO的界面性质。尽管STM图像显示在Au(111)和Au(100)上的FeO纳米岛上有明显不同的莫尔超结构,但TERS通过可比的振动特征证明了FeO具有相同的化学性质。此外,TERS和STM的联合测量确定了Au(100)上独特的皱纹状FeO结构,这与由于FeO沉积导致的本征Au(100)表面重构的重新组装有关。除了揭示Au衬底上超薄FeO的形态外,我们的研究还提供了对FeO在Au上的局部界面性质和相互作用的全面理解,这可能为金属负载的FeO催化剂的合理设计提供启示。此外,这项工作证明了TERS和STM联合在纳米尺度上化学探测金属负载的超薄氧化物的结构性质方面具有广阔的应用前景。