LEED Study of the Structure of the Pt₃Ti(510) Stepped Single Crystal Surface

Abstract

Binary intermetallic titanium-platinum compounds have been object of interest in view of their catalytic activity /1/. In previous papers /2-4/, we reported results of studies on the properties of single crystal Pt₃Ti low index surfaces. However, surface defects often play an important role in the catalytic and adsorptive properties of surfaces /5/. Therefore we extended our studies to a single crystal Pt₃Ti surface which was cut along a vicinal plane in order to form a regular array of surface steps. Stepped surfaces of single crystal pure metals have been extensively studied by LEED /5/. However, to our knowledge, no study of the stepped surface of a bimetallic compound has been reported in the literature so far. For pure platinum, ordered steps were reported to be unstable for the (510) oriented surface /6/. However, we found that an ordered array of surface steps can be formed on the Pt₃Ti surface with the same orientation.