Controlling surface reactions with nanopatterned surface elastic strain.

Abstract

The application of elastic lattice strain is a promising approach for tuning material properties, but the attainment of a systematic approach for introducing a high level of strain in materials so as to study its effects has been a major challenge. Here we create an array of intense locally varying strain fields on a TiO2 (110) surface by introducing highly pressurized argon nanoclusters at 6-20 monolayers under the surface. By combining scanning tunneling microscopy imaging and the continuum mechanics model, we show that strain causes the surface bridge-bonded oxygen vacancies (BBOv), which are typically present on this surface, to be absent from the strained area and generates defect-free regions. In addition, we find that the adsorption energy of hydrogen binding to oxygen (BBO) is significantly altered by local lattice strain. In particular, the adsorption energy of hydrogen on BBO rows is reduced by ∼ 35 meV when the local crystal lattice is compressed by ∼ 1.3%. Our results provide direct evidence of the influence of strain on atomic-scale surface chemical properties, and such effects may help guide future research in catalysis materials design.