Datensatz

Zusammenfassung

Strontium titanate is an extensively studied material with a wide range of application, for instance in photo-catalysis and most importantly, it is used as a substrate in growth of functional oxides. The surface chemistry is crucial and hence understanding the surface structure on atomic scale is essential for gaining insight into the fundamental processes in the aforementioned applications. Moreover, there exist a lot of evidence that this surface chemistry might be controlled to considerably by extrinsic species, such as residual hydrogen and water. Investigating the properties of water and oxygen on the strontium titanate surface is certainly a natural starting point for a theoretical study based on density functional theory, because these species are practically present on the surface on a wide range of experimental conditions and they are computationally feasible. For the oxygen and water adsorption the binding energy is controlled by long-range surface relaxations leading to an effective repulsion of the adsorbed specimen. The isolated oxygen ad-atom forms a covalently bonded “quasi-peroxide anion” in combination with a lattice oxygen atom. Contrariwise, in all investigated configurations containing water molecules and hydroxyl groups, the respective oxygen atoms assumed positions close to the oxygen sites of the continued perovskite lattice of the substrate. Most remarkably, on the strontium oxide termination, the water molecules adsorbs and dissociates effortlessly leading to the formation of a pair of hydroxyl groups. For the titanium dioxide termination, a coverage dependent adsorption mode is observed. Densely packings stabilize water molecules, whereas at lower coverage and finite temperatures the formation of hydroxyl groups is found. The energetics responsible for this behavior is consistent with recent experiments by Iwahori and coworkers.