Surface structure and composition of oxidized and reduced hydrated magnetite (111)

COLL 274

Sarah C. Petitto, scpetitto@hotmail.com1, Kunaljeet Tanwar, ftkjt@uaf.edu1, Sanjit K. Ghose, ghose@cars.uchicago.edu2, Peter Eng, eng@cars.uchicago.edu2, and Thomas P. Trainor1. (1) Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK 99775, (2) GSECARS, University of Chicago, Bldg # 434A Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 South Cass Ave, Argonne, IL 60439

Mineral surfaces, particularly Fe-(hydr)oxides, play a predominant role in controlling the composition of natural waters and regulating transport and bioavailability of aqueous contaminants.  X-ray crystal truncation rod (CTR) diffraction is used to investigate surface structures, relaxations, and chemical identity of terminating surface moieties of a chemically mechanically polished (CMP) prepared Fe3O4(111) in hydrated conditions that resulted in a 2-surface termination; 70% oxygen-octahedral iron : 30% oxygen-tetrahedral-octahedral-tetrahedral iron.  To better control and understand how the surface structure/composition changes, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) is used where the resultant surface is characterized using in-situ CTR and ex-situ atomic force microscopy (AFM).  EIS results show the oxidized surface has similar resistance to the reduced surface with no apparent changes in the CTR rods; however the AFM images show the formation of globules on the surface.  The terminating surface structures of reduced and oxidized Fe3O4(111) surfaces and implications on the surface reactivity will be discussed.