Steering on the high-temperature oxidation of Ru(0001)

Ruthenium oxide is the active phase and plays a signficant role in many catalytic reactions. By virtue of ultrahigh vacuum low temperature scanning tunneling microscopy, it has been observed that Ru(0001) could be oxidized to several novel kinds of ruthenium oxide films at different temperatures. High-resoltuion STM images showed that these films resulted from the novel structures formed at surface. Interestingly, these oxidation structures were inter-changeable upon reduction in hydrogen at different temperatures. After series of studies, the structual evolutions of Ru(0001) surface caused by high-temperature oxidation and reduction were revealed.