Theoretical study of Ni and Cu island growth on TiO2(110)

PHYS 307

Nga A. Nguyen, nanguyen@mtholyoke.edu, O. Iyore Ayanru, Elizabeth D. Goodridge, and Maria A. Gomez, magomez@mtholyoke.edu. Department of Chemistry, Mount Holyoke College, 50 College street, South Hadley, MA 01075
Nanoscale metal aggregates on oxide surfaces exhibit useful catalytic behavior not present in smaller or larger aggregates. In order to understand how the length scale of metal aggregates affects their properties, it is useful to prepare samples of different sizes. However, controlling the size distributions of metal islands on oxide surfaces is non-trivial. Although the ratio of the diffusion constant (D) to the deposition rate or flux (F) was found to be a good predictor for island size from previous work, copper and nickel with a similar D/F ratio still form very different size islands on TiO2(110). To investigate these differences, binding sites and energies for copper and nickel on titania are found using the Vienna Ab-inito Simulations Package (VASP). The nudge elastic band method is used to find lowest energy paths between those binding sites. The rubric of moves generated is used in Kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) studies to model the dynamics of island growth. In this poster, the mechanism for the growth of Cu and Ni islands on TiO2(110) is compared.
 

Physical Chemistry Posters
7:30 PM-10:00 PM, Wednesday, 16 March 2005 Convention Center -- Hall D, Poster

Division of Physical Chemistry

The 229th ACS National Meeting, in San Diego, CA, March 13-17, 2005