Surface hydroxyl formation on vacuum-annealed TiO2(110)

Abstract

The change in surface composition and structure of a rutile TiO2(110) surface during thermal annealing in an ultrahigh vacuum was studied by coaxial impact–collision ion scattering spectroscopy and time-of-flight elastic recoil detection analysis. When the clean TiO2(110) surface with a 1×1 bridging-oxygen-rows structure was obtained by annealing at 730 °C, about one monolayer of hydrogen atoms still resided on the surface. These hydrogen atoms were assigned to surface hydroxyls as an ingredient of the TiO2(110)1×1 structure, which was formed in the self-restoration process of surface oxygen vacancy defects by dissociative adsorption of water molecules during thermal annealing.