The growth of Ag ®lms on a TiO2(110)-(1 1) surface

We report here the growth of Ag ®lm and its thermal stability on the TiO2(1 1 0)-(1 1) surface using combination techniques of low-energy ion scattering (LEIS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and low-energy electron diffraction (LEED). At a surface temperature as low as 125 K, a 2D growth of Ag ®lms seems to occur for submonolayer coverages up to 0.8 ML. Annealing of low temperature grown Ag ®lms to 500 K for coverage of 1±2.4 ML would result in the formation of metastable Ag layers with rest of Ag forming 3D needle-like islands on top of this Ag ®lm. # 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.