Chinese Journal of Catalysis

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An atomistic thermodynamics study of the structural evolution of the Pt3Ni(111) surface in an oxygen environment

SUN Dapeng, ZHAO Yonghui, SU Haiyan, LI Weixue   

  1. State Key Laboratory of Catalysis, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian 116023, Liaoning, China
  • Received:2013-01-08 Revised:2013-04-28 Online:2013-07-16 Published:2013-07-16
  • Supported by:

    This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21173210, 21225315, 21273224, 21103164).

Abstract: The structural evolution of the Pt3Ni(111) surface under oxidizing conditions was studied by ab initio atomistic thermodynamics. The thermodynamic phase diagram from Ni-rich to Pt-rich conditions with oxygen coverages up to one monolayer was constructed from their 560 possible surface structures. With an increase in the oxygen chemical potential, there were only two types of thermodynamically stable structures, which were a clean Pt-skin surface and a Ni-skin surface with chemisorbed oxygen, regardless of the underlying Pt-rich or Ni-rich conditions. Bimetallic surfaces with chemisorbed oxygen were only metastable. The detail analysis revealed that the structural evolution is determined by the factors of segregation cost, difference between oxygen-metal (Pt and Ni) bonding strength, and oxygen chemical potential.

Key words: Pt3Ni, Oxygen, Segregation, Phase diagram, Ab initio calculation