Surface Structure and Modifications Under Ambient Pressure: A Case Study With Copper Surfaces

Low Miller-index copper surfaces break up into nanoclusters in the presence of reactant gases such as CO or CO2 in the Torr pressure range at room temperature. Such an atomistic phenomenon has a great significance in heterogeneous catalysis as it directly affects the electronic structure and thereby the chemical properties of the surface. The reason behind clustering of such compact surfaces is the high difference in adsorption energy at the low-coordinated Cu atoms (steps, kinks) and high-coordinated Cu atoms (terraces). Unlike CO and CO2, gas-phase methanol does not break up Cu into clusters because methoxy can already adsorb strongly on Cu terraces. These observations were made possible by the recent developments of high-pressure scanning tunneling microscopy and complementary spectroscopy techniques like ambient pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy. This article provides scanning tunneling microscope images, corroborating spectra, and density functional theory calculations to summarize all the recent findings in this field.